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Wow Dash, what an offer!

Well, I've played around with Vassal (not ever gamed on it though) I'm sure it can't be too hard. I'll look into getting it set up and getting the hang of it.

Thanks

Make sure that you get Skype and a working headset too. I'm also Dashofpepper on Skype.

Happy to help, but I do enough typing as it is, be damned if I'm going to have to type my way through a 40k game too. =D

+1 to what Dash said: so many people play games in which the only communication they have with their opponent is BS'ing around and game mechanics-specific (x shooting at y etc.).

If you've got a friend, who's very good, ask him WHY he's doing certain things. If you've got two buddies, and they don't mind you doing so, ask them throughout the game why they're making certain moves if you don't understand it.

Most importantly, IMO, deployment makes or breaks the game for you a lot of the time. After both of your buddies have deployed, ask why they did in that formation. I find that when I'm playing against less experienced players who want to get better, I verbalize literally everything starting with deployment. If I win the die roll for deployment, I'll tell him *why* I want to go first or second, or why I want to choose a specific side.

Another huge factor is target prioritization and firing order. Know the game mechanics and learn why you want to shoot in a certain order.

For my SW buddy, I'll say something like, "OK, since we're playing for objectives, and your Twolf cav aren't an immediate threat, I'm going to focus on your transports even though the Twolf cav are obviously more threatening to me". Or, "I'm going to let you deploy first, because even though I want 24" range to your units, we're both probably going to deploy in a way that won't allow that during my first turn shooting phase, so I'm hoping that you make a mistake and move closer to that unit. Wink wink."

Disclaimer: I'm not amazing by any means...I'm not even really good...but I really do enjoy teaching new players the subtle nuances of 40k and things I've learned in playing for over 15 years. A lot of people feel this way, so just ask people at your FLGS for advice.

As a computer scientist, skype is my second home

Take this with a grain of salt as I'm sure other, more experienced players can off more, but this is what I've learned in my two years or so of playing:

1) Deployment has a huge effect on the game. When I set up now, I look for fire lanes and traffic jams. It didn't take more than a couple of games to realize how rhinos can turn something into a parking lot, ESPECIALLY if the lead one bites it and wrecks in the first turn or two.

It's not just a matter of what deployment looks like, but what the board will look like in about 2 turns - everything has a pretty limited movement so you can get a good feeling for where things are going to be.

2) I'm done "messing around" by the end of turn 3. Turn 4 seems to be the "critical" one. If you don't have your troops and gameplan into position by then, you're screwed. You basically need to decide where you're going to committ your objective holders and heavies by this turn or you probably won't get the chance to. You really don't get a ton of movement turns in a game and being 3 ft away from where you need to be isn't good with 2 turns left to go.

3) You need to figure out if you're the beatdown or the control (To steal a M:TG concept). Are you the aggressive army or the defensive one? Do you want to get your guys into your opponent's face as quickly as possible or do you want to kite, bait, and run a lot? Trying to outshoot an army that's better at it than you are is a sure bet for chalking up a loss.

4) Personally, every time my army loses I tweak it a bit. It drives my opponents nuts (We have a small, regular group of guys that play). But on the other hand, I don't change my army until it loses - that lets my opponents figure out strategies that work.

Oh yeah, one bit of advice:

In many objective-based games, it pays to spend 4 turns killing the enemy and -then- going for the objectives. However, there are exceptions: many units such as plague marines excel at camping objectives in cover and make the enemy go through the trouble of digging them out!