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ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:
I would say that if you had two players of the exact same skill (skill including decision making, target priority, list building, and tons of other things) then luck is going to be the deciding factor because it’s the only thing that isn’t exactly equal. But if there is even a small disparity in skill that disparity is more influential then a very large disparity in luck. And having people with the exact same skill level is really never going to happen. And that level may change, one day I may be able to pull a fast one over you. You think about it, the next time you try something I have never seen before. The odds of a match coming down to nothing but luck are very, very small. I would say I have never lost solely on luck. With every game I can point to decisions that were wrong and would have increased my chances of winning. Had I made those decisions I might have won. Not saying it can’t happen, it just hasn’t happened to me.

I'm not sure I can completely agree with that statement. Large numbers were mentioned earlier and I think that's a great point to bring to bear here. Let's take an example;

I run Nobz in BWagons---couple of other loaded BWagons----Big Mek-----standard Ork build really. Now, I get my first turn and move up 13"----you start shooting your next turn because you're a gunline.

Now normally you might get...let's say 12 hits against my AV 14 Wagons---you roll average and get 4ish pens. So I roll my KFF saves----technically I should only get 2 saves here and you should roll twice on the damage chart, probably dislodging my Nobz. However, I roll well this phase and roll 4 saves.

Now big numbers say down the road...over many many games those good rolls will come back to haunt me and even things out. But making one good round of rolling in this case (IE luck), has made a tremendous difference in my chance for success as I will now have a chance to silence guns early....before they can make the odds come back to me later on this saves.


This is why I believe 1 off games against anyone proves pretty much, absolutely nothing and single games can (and usually with two good players) break down to luck. 40k isn't terribly complicated----target priority----movement quirks---experience against a wide variety of armies.

Just my opinion though, your mileage may vary .

Good players minimise the effect of luck by calculating probabilities and choosing situations in which the balance of probability is on their side.

This doesn't eliminate luck entirely, of course. I think it just slants the blue line on the graph down a bit.

I'm not sure I agree that there is such a thing as a "small" mistake anyway. Especially in the context of equivalent opponents.

Sure, some mistakes are larger than others, but as soon as a mistake has a tangible cost, it's not going to be small.

What would you consider a "small" mistake that is outstripped by luck?

DarknessEternal wrote:
What would you consider a "small" mistake that is outstripped by luck?

I'll make the mistake of running one of my boyz units every round in exchange for the luck of making every one of my KFF saves every round.

Trade?

AgeOfEgos wrote:

I'm not sure I can completely agree with that statement. Large numbers were mentioned earlier and I think that's a great point to bring to bear here. Let's take an example;

I run Nobz in BWagons---couple of other loaded BWagons----Big Mek-----standard Ork build really. Now, I get my first turn and move up 13"----you start shooting your next turn because you're a gunline.

Now normally you might get...let's say 12 hits against my AV 14 Wagons---you roll average and get 4ish pens. So I roll my KFF saves----technically I should only get 2 saves here and you should roll twice on the damage chart, probably dislodging my Nobz. However, I roll well this phase and roll 4 saves.

Now big numbers say down the road...over many many games those good rolls will come back to haunt me and even things out. But making one good round of rolling in this case (IE luck), has made a tremendous difference in my chance for success as I will now have a chance to silence guns early....before they can make the odds come back to me later on this saves.


This is why I believe 1 off games against anyone proves pretty much, absolutely nothing and single games can (and usually with two good players) break down to luck. 40k isn't terribly complicated----target priority----movement quirks---experience against a wide variety of armies.

Just my opinion though, your mileage may vary .

First, how dare you disagree!

Second, running with your example, If I deploy in such a way that one round of bad shooting on such a priority target is going to allow you to assault really important stuff then I haven’t done my job of deploying road bumps, building contingency plans, and doing a number of things that can be done to minimize the effects of the bad luck.

Now two rounds of bad shooting, probably not as much you can do. Three rounds, at that point I would sympathize with someone calling it bad luck. But to have three very noticeable turns of very above or below the stat curve is getting into the realm of virtual impossibility. Now you’re dice might fail at a really pivotal moment, but if you have played the game in a way where it all comes down to one or two rolls I say you have played it wrong. It happens that way a lot, it happens to me a lot, I play wrong a lot.

Just my two cents. As far as myself I feel like it is a much more accurate statement to blame myself when I lose as opposed to luck.

ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:But if there is even a small disparity in skill that disparity is more influential then a very large disparity in luck.

Why?

ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote: As far as myself I feel like it is a much more accurate statement to blame myself when I lose as opposed to luck.

Which is what I suppose I'm trying to get at here. Why is it more accurate to blame yourself than your dice for the outcome of a game?

Kilkrazy wrote:This doesn't eliminate luck entirely, of course. I think it just slants the blue line on the graph down a bit.

Hmm, this is an interesting way of thinking about it.

Of course, it's still relative. While your skill helps bump that line down, your opponent's skill helps bump that line up.

After all, if you were playing a much worse game than your opponent, you would probably need a great deal of luck to win.

DarknessEternal wrote:What would you consider a "small" mistake that is outstripped by luck?

Well, for example, a large mistake would be building a list that contains no anti-AV14. This provides a huge opportunity to your opponent if he brings any AV14. In fact, it would be easy to see how this would be the determining factor of a game (a land raider contesting an objective without fear of destruction, for example).

A small mistake would be things that are unlikely to hurt the person for making them, and if things do go against them, it's not very likely to determine the outcome of a game.

For example, if you accidentally turn a Leman russ against something in such a way where you expose the AV13 side armor to an autocannon, that's a pretty small mistake. The odds of that one autocannon doing anything are pretty low, and the odds of it doing something that actually affects the outcome of the game are even lower.

Plus, one of the things I forgot to mention earlier is the idea of tradeoffs. Very often in 40k, you can't do anything without risk. In the case of the above, the russ in question may have had to turn in order to blow up a land raider or kill off a demon prince, or something. In this case, letting the demon prince survive and make it into close combat with the russ would have been much worse off than exposing a little side armor.

Just because something goes poorly or well for you doesn't mean a mistake was made. You can still make the best move without it being a perfect move. Luck makes sure of that.

Ailaros wrote:

ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:But if there is even a small disparity in skill that disparity is more influential then a very large disparity in luck.

Why?

Because the negative results produced from bad play are much greater than the negative results produced from bad luck.

ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:
First, how dare you disagree!

Second, running with your example, If I deploy in such a way that one round of bad shooting on such a priority target is going to allow you to assault really important stuff then I haven’t done my job of deploying road bumps, building contingency plans, and doing a number of things that can be done to minimize the effects of the bad luck.

Now two rounds of bad shooting, probably not as much you can do. Three rounds, at that point I would sympathize with someone calling it bad luck. But to have three very noticeable turns of very above or below the stat curve is getting into the realm of virtual impossibility. Now you’re dice might fail at a really pivotal moment, but if you have played the game in a way where it all comes down to one or two rolls I say you have played it wrong. It happens that way a lot, it happens to me a lot, I play wrong a lot.

Just my two cents. As far as myself I feel like it is a much more accurate statement to blame myself when I lose as opposed to luck.

I hear you and understand where you're coming from. I've surely seen mistakes cost me games and learned quite a bit from idiotic (In hindsight) decisions. That said, I've also seen (especially since 5th Ed.) luck run away with someone before...both ways. Armor/SS saves are two good examples of this, as usually there are so few of those saves forced (Due to heavy weapon restrictions) that large numbers do not come into play...until you play multiple games.

I've seen many games turn on someone rolling multiple SS saves at a crucial time in the game (Above average by far). I've also seen the game turn the other way by watching my buddy roll 5 1's on normal Term saves. Small dice rolls with statistical outliers can certainly swing games in my experience.

This is why I've always joked that the fairest way to play 40k is to simply figure out, statistically, how many hits/wounds/saves should occur and apply the results .

AgeOfEgos wrote:This is why I've always joked that the fairest way to play 40k is to simply figure out, statistically, how many hits/wounds/saves should occur and apply the results .

It may be the most fair but it’s not as fun, at least for me. Figuring out the risk/reward of all your decision is part of what makes you a good player.

And yeah I have seen a lot of rolls at pivotal moment decide games. But I think the pivotal moment rolling is a symptom of crutch units or risky play which to me is bad play. Sometimes fun, but not high level. Maybe I have an elitist attitude when it comes to 40k.

ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:

AgeOfEgos wrote:This is why I've always joked that the fairest way to play 40k is to simply figure out, statistically, how many hits/wounds/saves should occur and apply the results .

It may be the most fair but it’s not as fun, at least for me. Figuring out the risk/reward of all your decision is part of what makes you a good player.

And yeah I have seen a lot of rolls at pivotal moment decide games. But I think the pivotal moment rolling is a symptom of crutch units or risky play which to me is bad play. Sometimes fun, but not high level. Maybe I have an elitist attitude when it comes to 40k.

Oh, I absolutely agree! The fondest memories I have of 40k are statistical outliers (Remember that time your Khorne Champion made 29 saves and wiped out an entire GeneStealer brood?!), etc. I'm more a 'Tell a story' than play competitively.

Pivotal moments can be based on risky play to be sure...but risking 6 terminator saves at the loss of 1 is an acceptable risk imo. When you roll 5 ones though, the outliers really suck!

Regardless, good discussion.

Ailaros wrote:
For example, if you accidentally turn a Leman russ against something in such a way where you expose the AV13 side armor to an autocannon, that's a pretty small mistake. The odds of that one autocannon doing anything are pretty low, and the odds of it doing something that actually affects the outcome of the game are even lower.

When the chances of something being destroyed go from zero to "anything except zero" then that's a fairly large mistake if you had nothing to gain from doing so.

That's still a small mistake. A BS4 Autocannon gets 0.22 results against Armor 13.

A large mistake would be turning it around entirely or tank shocking with the Leman Russ against a melta carrying squad rather than shooting at them.

I agree with the original post that luck becomes a greater factor in the game as a player's skill increases. Although people write lists to minimise luck, it is still present, and given that no list writing or tactical mistakes are made, luck can be the deciding factor. However, the different armies in the game are simply not balanced. It has been my experience that the imbalance between armies is usually the deciding factor, rather than luck or tactics. Sometimes you have a clearly dominant list, and other times the tournament lists function like rock paper scissors.

The OP reminds of Magic: The Gathering or Poker. Yes, luck is a factor. But, overall, skill takes precedence. There is such a hideous number of factors in one single game of WH40k that I find it hard to believe that luck is the ultimate deciding factor. I completely agree that luck influences the outcome, but it is marginal compared to raw skill and list-building. Sometimes luck can outweigh raw skill and list-building, but I find that to be the exception and not the rule. Just my .02 cents.

ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:
I would say that if you had two players of the exact same skill (skill including decision making, target priority, list building, and tons of other things) then luck is going to be the deciding factor because it’s the only thing that isn’t exactly equal.

See, this is exactly what I'm arguing against. This argument only works if the players happen to take the same list. There is this hidden assumption that either "Equal list building skill" = "Same list", or "Equal list building skill" = "Any list Player A constructs is an even matchup with any list Player B constructs". The first proposition is clearly false. The second is also false. My reasoning is that, it may be true that list A and list B are equally good in an all-comers sense, that is, the have the same probability at winning against an opponent that is randomly sampled from the appropriate meta. Thus, over a large sample of opponents, with a mix that represents the local metagame, the two lists are equally good. However, each list is inevitably going to have good matchups and bad matchups. List A might brutally punish Mech IG because it focuses on killing armor, but have a rough time with a DoA army because it can't kill MEQ fast enough. List B might be a Mech IG list, so the advantage goes to A when they play each other. When Player A wins, we can't attribute the win to player skill, but giving it to luck isn't really appropriate either. We see this kind of thing in other areas all the time: Sports, video games, etc.

Again, I think the Poker comparison is apt here. Player A might consistently beat Player B for a variety of reasons yet we might still think they are equally skilled in some abstract sense because they perform equally well against the field in general.

Alright....I had typed up a pretty lengthy response, highlighting key issues that I wanted to address, then realized that some of the presumptions that I was going to have to respond to (like all my opponents being really bad) are ridiculous, or that I already hit them.


I will offer this instead as a note on minimizing luck's factor in your game.

When 10 Orks fight 10 Marines, they are going to need luck to win the combat.

When 20 Orks fight 10 Marines, they are going to need luck to wipe out the marines.

When 100 Orks fight 10 Marines, luck is no longer a factor in the Marines dying.

This is common sense, but think on it deeper than face value.

A skilled player, a truly skilled player, makes decisions on the table that minimise the amount of 'luck' needed to achieve a certain objective. The two aren't independent from each other, you merely use a controllable factor (your ability at 40k), to limit or nullify an uncontrollable one (the dice). The better you are ad identifying and making those decisions, the better a player you are.

I think someone earlier in the thread (Dash?) said pretty much the same thing; the higher your skill level the less of an impact luck has on your game. Its why consistently 'unlucky' people blame the dice rather than their tactics or their overall strategy. This is normally a result of their army only having a single strategy (usually 'Get 'em!' or 'Blast 'em!') without an effective back-up and/or lack of intelligent playing decisions during the game.

As the player doesn't understand how to play their army differently, as their strategy is so very, very basic; anything that does go wrong is the dice's fault: 'I needed to get across the board as quickly as possible, I didn't roll high enough for DT/run moves, dice screwed me over.'

I'm normally an advocate for luck not getting the recognition it properly deserves in 40K, but to say luck and skill operate completely independently of each other is, I'm afraid, incorrect.

L. Wrex

This type of analysis that the original poster posted is spot on...it's been thought out and done in other games. There's a similar thing that Seth (who now works for capcom) wrote during the first US vs. Japan.
Execution sets apart the top players and the good players.

At the top level, everyone has the knowledge and the lists..so you'd think it would be luck, but the little things matter. You might think it would be luck, but a really good player can take advantage of situations. A small mistake might means few models down..which in turn means they can't do their job as well, etc etc...it's more magnified against good opponents.

On top of that, you are right to be discouraged, because you've discovered diminishing returns. But the fact is diminishing returns is true for everything. It doesn't matter what anybody comepete at...as you go up in skill, achiveing the next level of ability requires exponential amount of time and effort.

This is why in Michael Jordan's book he calls himse;f "a student of the game." He might be considered great, but even he sees the holes in his own game.

The other thing too...as you get better, you notice more weaknesses in your own gameplay that are exceptionally difficult to correct..that you might not have noticed before.

The exception to the rule is when game breakdown occurs. For instance, tic tac toe. Because the options are so small and finite, it is easy to break down the game and have a perfect mathematical solution early.

But for 40k, which evolves and has many permutations, it's an ongoing process.

For once I agree with Ailaros on something.

If two players of equal skill mirror match each other they should have a 50% chance to win/lose.

Ailaros is saying that at the extreme, if you play perfectly, and terrain is perfect, and your lists are evenly matched (alot of big ifs, but follow along), then the only thing that will effect the outcome of an individual match can only possibly BE determined by individual die rolls.

The idea that you can somehow be good enough to not care about what dice you roll is absurd. If you have a list that can throw enough dice at everything at everyone everywhere all the time forever and ever and not ever care what an individual roll is then either your list is better, your opponents are worse, or your matchups are more lopsided through a category you can't determine than your ego wants them to be (points to mister 99.9999% win ratio even though I roll 30% ones all the time)

@Ailaros

Luck is very subjective.
I know MANY players who claim to be unlucky in order to mitigate their lack of skill in front of opponents.
So they keep forgetting good rolls and insist on bad rolling if some roll was under "average".

If you need lady luck on your side, then you have a bad matchup or you play a better opponent.

40k is more than basic tactics actually. You can simplify it afterwards of course, but it is as simple as Sun Tzu: Simple but not easy.

My key to victory is:

Try to avoid important dice rolls (rather avoid engagement for one more turn)
local superiority cannot be broken
1:0 on mission objectives is sufficient to victory, so dont let the opponent get the 1 (you could get the 0)

So if you want to avoid luck:

Movement Phase is your phase. Unless you dont have terrain infront of you, it is your free choice what to do. Use that freedom.
Every target engagable for the opponent should be treated as a (potential) casualty.
Use distances in your favour.
Clear target priority. Most important stuff has to be shot. It HAS to be shot (I spent a whole game killing my opponents bloodletters ignoring the crushers tearing through my army. It was an objective game, I traded half of my army in order to get them, I would have won on turn 5, we tied after he killed my last troop and it was his only tie in the tournament the rest were massacre victories (he won it) but if I altered even a bit, I would have lost badly)

I think the outcome of a game depends on:

50% matchup (your army vs enemy army under the given mission on the given table)
40% skill
10% luck


EDIT @Mike

Ailaros is saying that at the extreme, if you play perfectly, and terrain is perfect, and your lists are evenly matched (alot of big ifs, but follow along), then the only thing that will effect the outcome of an individual match can only possibly BE determined by individual die rolls.

Under that certain circumstances the very most likely outcome of the game will be a draw.

The idea that you can somehow be good enough to not care about what dice you roll is absurd.

No it isnt. Learn to move properly^^

I agree with the O.P.

For this reason;

In the absence of any mistakes, if both players play perfect games, then the winner will be the one who had more luck.

What form that luck takes is an entirely different matter. Luck enters into games in more ways than the rolls of the dice.

If you're playing in a tournament, your first round match-up can derail any chance you have of winning first place. With a sufficiently large number of players, the eventual winner will need to go undefeated. With a non-sufficiently large number of games, the eventual winner will need to not only win, but to massacre their opponents. If you draw a not-so-good player in the first round, you're on your way. If you draw one of the other top players at the event, you will most likely knock each other out of contention.

A few years back, I faced Bill Kim in the first round of the Adepticon gladiator. He's won the event (twice, I think). We played to a near draw, and the rest of the day was spent playing essentially meaningless games.

Luck can also feature in match-ups. As much as you can try to make an all-comers list, all lists will have some lists that they do better against, and, therefore, some that they do worse against. Not to pick on Bill, but the year after the above game, he took his Stealer Shock to the gladiator. This was tail-end of 4th edition, and mechdar was a powerful build. Bill knew that his list had a real uphill battle against well-played mechdar lists, because they could dance around the stealers. But, he never had to face a mechdar list. That's also luck. That's not trying to say that Bill only won because of this. Clearly he's an excellent player, because when the luck fell in his favour, he was able to take advantage of this, and outplay his opponents to win the event.


That same weekend, at the championship game, I played a mechdar list. I knew I had a weakness against destroyer-heavy necron lists, but I could pretty much beat anything else. I'd rocked my first few games, and was on the top three tables for the final game. I also had an excellent looking army (within the top 10 for paint scores, if I recall correctly), a perfect sportsmanship score... I was in the running. As I approached the top tables, I saw the other armies set up. Chaos Marines, Marines... and this one monolith, backed up with 17 destroyers. Yup, that was my table. I gave it my best shot, but after a couple of turns, all my skimmers were permanently shaken, and he was able to pick it apart. I pretty much knew, walking up to the table, that I was already knocked out. No dice involved, just luck of the draw. (Clearly, my opponent was also an excellent player, or he would not have been at the top tables either).

So, between list match-ups and opponent match-ups, it's pretty easy to see how luck has already been able to knock a really-good player out of contention at any given tournament. And we haven't even rolled a single die yet.

Then there's terrain. The simple assignment of what table you're playing on can have a huge impact. Playing a bike or cavalry heavy force, and find yourself on a table with those accursed ruins that your men cannot even enter - and watch your opponent place the objectives on the upper floors.... Are you playing a long-range shooty army, only to find yourself on a table with few clear firing lanes and plenty of places for your opponent's models to advance without being seen? Are you playing an assault army, and find yourself on a table with lots of difficult terrain that doesn't even provide cover (rivers/marshes anyone)?

And we still haven't rolled a die.

Are you the guy who gets to play the objective mission against someone with 2 five-man troop squads, and the kill point mission against someone with 24 kill points in their army? Or are you the guy who gets to play the objective game against someone with 10 scoring units and three fast skimmers to contest with, and the kill point mission against the guy with 4 units in their entire army?

All these things are luck, none are dice-related, and any of them can win, or lose, you a game.

And then there are those two all-important first rolls...

As skill levels increase towards perfection, the impact of luck definitely increases. Good player beat average players because the good player can plan for, and mitigate the effects of luck better. But when skill levels are equal, 40k really does come down to luck.

I'm going to have to throw my lot in with Dash here....I mean, yes in a game with perfectly balanced armies, with perfect play on both sides, the deciding factor will be luck. It will be that one flubbed roll with a powerfist, or that time you rolled 3 ones to fry yourself with your own plasma guns. It will be luck.

However, we do not live in an idea world, and in reality, the chance of you facing a game where everyone is equal in skill, and play a perfect game is next to nil. There will be mistakes made by even the most experienced player. They might set up their army, and not check line of site to make sure they were hidden behind terrain, which could easily turn the game around. I agree, that with more experienced mistaked, smaller mistakes get amplified, and the big obvious mistakes get toned down, but that's my opinion. As the players grow more experienced, the tiny flaws they made in their game play get inflated massively by their well skilled opponent, and since the mistake isn't obvious, or even readily spottable, it gets put down to 'luck'.

I mean, going back to my example with checkig line of sight. Let's say you've got a Russ in a position where you think its hidden completely from your enemy's railguns. However you didn't check, and a railgun can see you. You get cover, but it sees you. It hits and stuns your Russ first shooting phase, which then snowballs into costing you the game. Now, is it luck that you didn't make your cover save that cost you the game, or is it the mistake you made that cost you the game? I say its the mistake.

I mean, going back to my example with checkig line of sight. Let's say you've got a Russ in a position where you think its hidden completely from your enemy's railguns. However you didn't check, and a railgun can see you. You get cover, but it sees you. It hits and stuns your Russ first shooting phase, which then snowballs into costing you the game. Now, is it luck that you didn't make your cover save that cost you the game, or is it the mistake you made that cost you the game? I say its the mistake.

Every target engagable for the opponent should be treated as a (potential) casualty. This should be in your plans. If it wasnt, its a lack of skill. If you wanted to hide the russ and did not make it completely then you deserve it to be killed.

My theory is, under equal circumstances you always will be able to tie on top level.

Not taking missions or enemy lists into consideration while building your own list is a lack of skill.

Luck can also feature in match-ups. As much as you can try to make an all-comers list, all lists will have some lists that they do better against, and, therefore, some that they do worse against. Not to pick on Bill, but the year after the above game, he took his Stealer Shock to the gladiator. This was tail-end of 4th edition, and mechdar was a powerful build. Bill knew that his list had a real uphill battle against well-played mechdar lists, because they could dance around the stealers. But, he never had to face a mechdar list. That's also luck.

Yes he needed this luck because of his lack of skill to take the mechdar threat into consideration.

I played a mechdar list. I knew I had a weakness against destroyer-heavy necron lists, but I could pretty much beat anything else. I'd rocked my first few games, and was on the top three tables for the final game. I also had an excellent looking army (within the top 10 for paint scores, if I recall correctly), a perfect sportsmanship score... I was in the running. As I approached the top tables, I saw the other armies set up. Chaos Marines, Marines... and this one monolith, backed up with 17 destroyers. Yup, that was my table. I gave it my best shot, but after a couple of turns, all my skimmers were permanently shaken, and he was able to pick it apart.

same story. Why did you allow a major weakness to destroyer heavy opponents? If it was so important that it lost you the game. Perhaps you could solve this problem creatively?

Then there's terrain. The simple assignment of what table you're playing on can have a huge impact. Playing a bike or cavalry heavy force, and find yourself on a table with those accursed ruins that your men cannot even enter - and watch your opponent place the objectives on the upper floors.... Are you playing a long-range shooty army, only to find yourself on a table with few clear firing lanes and plenty of places for your opponent's models to advance without being seen? Are you playing an assault army, and find yourself on a table with lots of difficult terrain that doesn't even provide cover (rivers/marshes anyone)?

Those are unbalanced conditions and therefore uncompetitive. But still, why do you need a specific terrain for your army to work properly?

Luck and skill. One could say that that trying to remove luck from the game is the best use of skill.

I play a lot more Blood Bowl (board and PC) than I do 40k. It's a faster game and the growth aspect is a lot of fun for me.

Some of the most sucessful coaches in Blood Bowl will move all of their players that can move before they pickup a single die. This gets their guys into position and doesn't leave anything to chance before any matter of luck can change the board. I try to teach new coaches this as it will help their offense and defense tremendously.

But rolling dice early (before moving all players) can have huge implications. If you knock down some of their guys, or simply move some of your own blockers out of the way, you can open up lanes for critical blitzes or better formations. But that is taking risks. Like poker, sometimes they pay off, sometimes they don't. It is up to the coach to determine if it is worth the risk, but you go into it knowing that you can't win 100% of the time.

40k is a more complicated game (with very few rerolls!) but sometimes it can be simplified to near Blood Bowl levels. Nothing is usually 100%, but you can shift your odds and have backup plans. Position a key squad that can fire on 2 or 3 different things. Fire the rest of your army first at critical targets. Fire this last key squad at whatever remains. This key squad is your "reroll" against the critical targets.

Another thing to consider is best described with Long Fangs splitting fire. If you have Lascannons in the squad and two Monoliths bearing down on them, they should always split fire, and be fired first. Odds are against you blowing both up, but if you don't split fire then you will never blow both up. These things can happen so don't remove the possibility before you even try.

Aillaros' initial point is fact and not disputable. If one controls for skill, terrain, etc. (IE all-non "luck" factors), then the result of the game will be determined by "luck". It's definitional.

However, I think there is some misalignment on what "luck" means. In terms of this discussion, it seems to indicate variability due to dice roll. This is the classic difference between games of chance and skill. Chess is a classic example of a skill game- there is no random factor. Dice based games are chance games- you can always "lose" on a roll and successful strategies revolve around probabilities.

Comparing 40k to sports (or fighting games) is flawed- sports generally have little to no randomness. Other than the initial coin flip (a random event), there are no random events that the game depends on (for example, American footbal teams do not roll a dice to determine whether a touchdown attempt scores 6, 7, or 0 points). There are an exceedingly high number of variables, but for game theory, these are classed as non-random in that they are a product of decision or circumstance, not a random generator.

Cards are also very different from dice based games in the randomization mechanic. Games like Magic involve a limited pool without replacement- that is, you only have a set amount of cards, and once you draw a given card, you will not draw it again and the card total (and variability) is reduced. Not so with dice- each roll is an independant event.

The only real debate here I see is the relative weight of the random event compared to minor differences in player skill (defined as actual skill, not optimal, IE how they actually play in the game, not what they are capable of). To this end, I would say it varies somewhat and certain lists rely more on the random element than others. There is a fairly high level of randomness in the game, though, for the most part, that is not possible to compensate for. For example, if an opponent goes first and rolls in a statistically high manner, the only response is to act in a manner that minimizes that damage. It is quite possible to have units crippled to a point that they cannot recover on due to astatistical rolling. Thereotically, a poorer player could beat a better one based an "better" rolling.

However, it is my opnion that there are broad skill levels (perhaps five or so) that generally account for more than the random factor, and playing up or down more than one band almost guarantees the result. I do not think that small differences in skill will compensate for any significant swing in the random factor.

I think its fair to say that there is no such thing as a perfect mirror match between two players of identical skill....unless you copy your own list and play against yourself. Then you could see how luck factors in, presuming that you made no mistakes on either side.

Short of that....I'm not sure I agree with things like Redbeard's assessment of luck and its factor.

While it may have been "bad luck" for you to get paired up against a destroyer heavy Necron army....it was only bad luck because you brought a list that wasn't capable of dealing with them. The same thing to the guy who plays an objective mission against someone with 2 five-man troop squads. Player skill dictated the assembly of that list. And the kill-point mission against someone with 24 killpoints? Player skill assembled that list too.

Heck, my Dark Eldar run 25 killpoints. I don't have issues in killpoint games, because my player skill dictates how I approach and win those challenges.

MrEconomics wrote:

ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:
I would say that if you had two players of the exact same skill (skill including decision making, target priority, list building, and tons of other things) then luck is going to be the deciding factor because it’s the only thing that isn’t exactly equal.

See, this is exactly what I'm arguing against. This argument only works if the players happen to take the same list. There is this hidden assumption that either "Equal list building skill" = "Same list", or "Equal list building skill" = "Any list Player A constructs is an even matchup with any list Player B constructs". The first proposition is clearly false. The second is also false. My reasoning is that, it may be true that list A and list B are equally good in an all-comers sense, that is, the have the same probability at winning against an opponent that is randomly sampled from the appropriate meta. Thus, over a large sample of opponents, with a mix that represents the local metagame, the two lists are equally good. However, each list is inevitably going to have good matchups and bad matchups. List A might brutally punish Mech IG because it focuses on killing armor, but have a rough time with a DoA army because it can't kill MEQ fast enough. List B might be a Mech IG list, so the advantage goes to A when they play each other. When Player A wins, we can't attribute the win to player skill, but giving it to luck isn't really appropriate either. We see this kind of thing in other areas all the time: Sports, video games, etc.

Again, I think the Poker comparison is apt here. Player A might consistently beat Player B for a variety of reasons yet we might still think they are equally skilled in some abstract sense because they perform equally well against the field in general.

The argument Ailaros has created is "If you completely control for everything except luck, only luck will be a factor" which he has extended to "top-tier players have controlled for everything except luck, so luck will be the only factor in them winning their games against each other"

Your point presented above is "Well if you completely control for everything except luck AND imbalance between army lists, then the imbalance between army lists will also be a factor!" This is correct, but individual matchups roll back into the "luck" thing. In your example, a particular set of players might not have an even 50/50 (or 20 win 60 draw 20 win, which is probably more likely) spread vs. each other due to their lists, but would perform equally well against the teeming masses as a whole, which for the purposes of the argument is functionally the same thing.

Jmurph encapsulated the debate pretty well.

nazdreg wrote:No it isnt. Learn to move properly^^

Read my post until you THINK you understand it, and then read it again a couple more times, and you'll see exactly why what you typed is incorrect.

Dashofpepper wrote:
While it may have been "bad luck" for you to get paired up against a destroyer heavy Necron army....it was only bad luck because you brought a list that wasn't capable of dealing with them. The same thing to the guy who plays an objective mission against someone with 2 five-man troop squads. Player skill dictated the assembly of that list. And the kill-point mission against someone with 24 killpoints? Player skill assembled that list too.

But you're failing to take into considerations the way that tournaments were run then (and some still are). If you have 150 participants in a three or four round tournament, then you -need- massacres to be in the running. Squeeking out minor victories simply doesn't cut it. That means that, in that environment, you need to take a list that's going to be capable of massacres in the most common matchups (versus MEQ, and versus whatever the meta is running at that time (in late 4th ed, that was largely nidzilla and mechdar, along with the MEQ lists). Taking a list that gives up scoring massacres against the more common opponents, in exchange for a slight edge against the less common opponents (I don't think there were many more than 5 necron armies there) is a poor strategic choice.

Luck enters into it because there is the chance that you play the necron army. But, playing the odds, you take the list that gets the massacres versus 75% of the field and has a bad game against 5% of the field, because that yields the best chances to win the event. There's actually math that backs up this assertion.

Now, some of the newer tournament formats, like Nova, and like Adepticon is doing this year, are changing that dynamic. They reward the player who wins all their games, even barely, above those that massacre. So you plan accordingly. In that scoring system, you're right, you try to eliminate poor match-ups, because winning is more important than massacring, and you cannot afford the loss to the match-up. But if failing to massacre is equivalent to failing to win, that's not as true.

There is luck in sports. Take the two sports I know best: basketball and boxing.

In basketball, you're not gonna make every shot you shoot. That's why rebounding is so important. It's almost random whether or not a sharp shooter makes a 3 pointer. A good 3 point shooter shoots like 45%...that's as random as can be. BUT..you factor in the miss aspect of that into your strategy. This is why a dunk or a layup is a better shot...it has a higher chance of going in.

You know on intentional fouls, you try to foul the guy that shoots the worst on free throws. Smart teams try to counteract this by inbounding the ball on intentional fouls to the point guard..who usually has the highest free throw percentage. That's not too different from 40k.

Boxing..same thing. You can dominate an opponent for 11 rounds and get hit by a lucky punch and get knocked out. But as hall of famer boxing coach Freddie Roach once said, "There is no such thing as a lucky punch." Yet, at the same time, I've seen weird things. I've seen someone slip on a wet spot, and then get canned by a haymaker while his footing was lost.

However, that's considered part of the game, and that's why so much is stressed on footwork...to mitigate random crap like this happening.

Luck is part of the game. dealing with luck is very much a part of the game.


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The argument Ailaros has created is "If you completely control for everything except luck, only luck will be a factor" which he has extended to "top-tier players have controlled for everything except luck, so luck will be the only factor in them winning their games against each other"

Problem with this is that we haven't even touched the tip of the iceberg. In fighting games, top players routinely watch videos of themselves and other top players to gain insight into the game. I'm not saying they watch 30 seconds of crap. I mean frame by frame over and over on situations that gave them trouble. As a former top 3rd strike player, I spent hours in the lab working on specific things over and over. I don't see 40k being taken to that level. If anything, 40k evolves kind of slow, even with the internet around.

To add to this...unlike fighting games that don't have rules changes very often, the 40k rules itself evolve as new codecies and faqs come in...and very often these faqs invalidate or completely change popular strategies.

The other thing is there isn't a standard way to play the game. Players do not have set tables or set terrain or even set rules about how terrain works. Each location generally plays things differently, and the rulebook advocates that by being wishy washy about terrain rules.

Add in random ass missions in hard boyz and other tournaments, and you have a game where it's very unlikely a player entering in has a complete understanding of what's going on. It's simply too difficult.

DarknessEternal wrote:

Ailaros wrote:
For example, if you accidentally turn a Leman russ against something in such a way where you expose the AV13 side armor to an autocannon, that's a pretty small mistake. The odds of that one autocannon doing anything are pretty low, and the odds of it doing something that actually affects the outcome of the game are even lower.

When the chances of something being destroyed go from zero to "anything except zero" then that's a fairly large mistake if you had nothing to gain from doing so.

He clearly made the point that he gained from doing so, but then provided an opportunity for luck to rear it's head. If the opponent then gets a lucky shot in, that could cost the game while not being a "mistake" since it was the best choice available. Basically, the "if you had nothing to gain" is the crux.

There was talk about small mistakes meaning much more in higher-skilled games. This is incredibly true, and where competitive play really shines. So eventually, small mistakes are actually big mistakes, once skill levels are that refined. However, there's a point where bad luck *does* emulate mistakes, as Ailaros suggests. The example mentioned that a small mistake cost a unit a few models, which then reduced its ability to perform later on. Rolling poorly on armor saves emulates this perfectly, and can cost you the exact same number of models.

To get mathematical, there's a theoretical point where the only factor in a game is luck, since everything is played out perfectly. Nobody said this has to happen "IRL", you just have to accept the theory. Pretend someone programmed it on the computer or something. Now, on the other hand, it's possible for the disparity between two opponents to be so large that there is no amount of luck that will save the less skilled. He can roll all 6's if he wants, but there's no way a 50-man Guard Blob is bringing down that Wraithlord. Now, if you graph the effect of luck and the effect of skill, like Ailaros has, but let the lines vary all you want, there's still one thing that must happen: there has to be a crossover where the difference in skill affects the game less than luck. This part of the graph is what A-ros is talking about, and it mathematically has to exist. (If you're a math person, yes, I'm assuming the functions are continuous. Deal with it.)

The discussion, as I see it, is whether this region of skill vs luck is large enough to trifle about. You can have plans with backup plans and more backup plans, but there are times you're just fethed by dice. You can also Gump your way into victory. These are part of the game, and no amount of skill will prevent it from happening. If you play defensively enough that you avoid the possibility of getting wiped out by poor saves, you won't be in a position to take advantage when it happens to your opponent. If you both play that way, you may as well stay in your deployment zones and play with yourselves.

You can reduce the effect that luck has, but you can never make it meaningless. If you're finding that luck is playing too much a part in your games, then you should put effort into minimizing that. Take redundant units, play more (or less) conservatively, buy expensive and balanced dice. Someone pointed out that 40k isn't as practiced and evolved as some sports where people watch their matches over and over again, and I think there's at least some validity there. There's almost guaranteed to be a way to change your game or playstyle to reduce luck's effect. But even if you work at it for years, there's the statistical possibility you roll all 1's for everything (except leadership checks, of course).

I think the best ways to reduce luck's impact are large point games, and missions with multiple tiers of objectives. The more goes on in a game, the more skill can come into play to compensate for turns of luck.