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Dr. Serling wrote:Use feints. Send out a unit people expect to be tricked out and dangerous so they waste all their shooting and assault on it. Make the unit bare bones so instead of removing a real threat they were pissing in the wind.

Your opponent is required to know everything about your army list, so this only works if they are easily distracted anyway.

During your movement phase, look blatantly to the right side of the board . . then move your units left.

The ol' tricksy-movesy, get's 'em every time.

Even the best commanders over-look things. I was trying out SWS in guard with melta's a few times, months ago. Because they look very much like standard infantry and the fact I had bigger things like the demolishers on the board, they were ignored. Those melta's got a hell of a volley off and crippled a necron heavy destroyer squad.

Bringing the wife along with wearing a nice dress, or good cleavage shirt. She takes pictures and talks to the nice guy I'm playing against. Always a wonderful distraction. Then we cackle all the way home with a victory. Mwah Ha hah!

I wrote a Dark Eldar tactica, which involved some discussion of psychological tactics. Here's a couple pieces of it:

Part I: State of Mind:
This is the first part of being successful with Dark Eldar – starting a game with the right state of mind. My list-creation advice always echoes the same sentiments – things like, “The best defense is a good offensive,” and “Every ablative wound you take is killing power you’re losing.” That list creation mentality of “KILL KILL KILL” needs to effectively translate into your mindset for your success in a game of 40k. Before you start rolling dice, get angry. Not angry and unsportsmanlike…more affronted. It is beneath your dignity to have to mutilate unworthy opponents. They should voluntarily subject their souls for your pleasure, not inconvenience you by making you waste your time taking them.

I write this first because it is the most important. Mentally visualize how every enemy vehicle is going to explode. How you are going to viciously table your opponent without taking a single casualty. Completely focus your thoughts on utterly annihilating your enemy from the table. And they ARE your enemy. For the 2-2.5 hours of the game, your friend/opponent/stranger is NOT your friend. They were rude enough to challenge your supremacy on the table-top, and deserve extinction. Every tank you kill should send a joyous thrill through your temporarily black heart. Every model you kill is your enemy’s just desserts for the sheer audacity in wasting your time. When you enter a tournament, you should be morally outraged that they didn’t just hand you the prize support at the beginning to save them humiliation at your hands on the table top, and trembling with anticipation to repay such an insult with a vengeance.

This serves two purposes.
1. It puts you in the right frame of mind to examine how to cause the maximum damage to your opponent, which works in conjunction with the same effort you should have put into your list, figuring out how to create maximum killing potential. No…you should NOT have five trueborn in that venom if they only have 4 special weapons.
2. It keeps you focused on killing. Every vehicle you lose needs to redouble your fury and desire to wipe the board clean of your enemy. Dark Eldar are not objective campers. They are not reserve or deep-striking utilizers. We do not sit in cover on an objective and waggle our tongues at inferior species. We do not need to do anything other than present ourselves squarely on the battlefield, DECLARE that we own it, and laugh in the face of anyone who has something to say about it. We eviscerate them with darklight, poison and blade. I’ve said this before and will again no doubt, but the answer to “Don’t you think you should take a 5 man warrior squad to camp at least one objective?” is a simple and stark “NO!!” We are killers. If you are a Dark Eldar player, you are a KILLER!

Every point in your army should be focused on killing. Every thought through your head about your army should be focused on killing. For the 2-2.5 hours of that tournament game, every molecule of your being needs to be the antithesis of your enemy, terribly and violently focused on absolute destruction and demoralization of your enemy.

Now, with that said, I again must reiterate that this is not synonymous with bad sportsmanship. You should not growl at your opponent across the table, or bite them, or brandish weaponry. Smile, joke, be friendly. But you must *NOT* be distracted from the razor edge mindset that you’ve willed yourself into that is completely focused on ruin and the suffering of your inferiors. 40k should be, and *is* fun. Winning is fun, and tabling your opponent without losing a single model is absolutely giddy. It is NOT your job to make your opponent have a good game. It IS your job to make your opponent feel like they are being destroyed by a gentleman. Whether their ego can tolerate unequivocal destruction of their ability (or inability) to create a list, and the mockery of their tactical skills on the table or not is NOT your problem. If they are good sports, they will accept the humbling gracefully, and possibly learn something. If they are bad sports, they will grumble, swear, and/or be sullen about the abuse you inflict on them. Again, NOT YOUR PROBLEM. They shouldn’t have affronted you in the first place by making you spend the time destroying them. If they had conceded at the beginning, you two could have gone and had a drink and chatted together. They should have KNOWN that Dark Eldar are indomitable.

Don’t smack-talk. Last weekend my friend was smacktalking one of my opponents on my behalf, and said, “The best kind of smacktalk is the kind someone else has to back up.” It was funny, but in terms of sportsmanship, don’t do it. You must be utterly confident, completely vicious, absolutely focused on killing, killing, killing. I go through this ritual before every single game. I mentally visualize violence, focus my every thought on how lethal I need my army to be and keep that intense focus throughout the entire game.

This section of my guide on winning with Dark Eldar isn’t a be-all, end-all of Dark Eldar tactics – it is meant to prepare you mentally for HOW to play and how to approach each game, not what moves to make in a game.

----------------------------------------------------------------



Bonus: Disruptive Psychology

This final piece of my article deals with disrupting your enemy’s plans and messing with their heads. Don’t be foolish enough to think that psychology isn’t part of 40k. Your own psychology (if you have followed my guide) is a single-minded unstinting focus on absolute lethality. You know what your threats are in order of danger, you have a plan in mind to deal with them, and you’ve analyzed your enemy’s army, the table and terrain to create your plan for tabling their army and making them question the validity of their existence and participation in the hobby.

Your enemy is doing all the same things you are.

Disruptive psychology is the art of making your enemy second-guess themselves, lose focus and make mistakes to your advantage. You could even call it a facet of social engineering. A smirk at a critical moment can change the course of a game. They key to this is to make comments or facial expressions designed to make your opponent believe that they either just made a mistake, are about to make a mistake, or just did something favorable to you (even if it isn’t). Some examples:

Example #1: You roll for deployment option with your opponent and lose. It is an objective game, and he gives you first turn. You deploy accordingly. Your opponent deploys in response. He picks up the dice to roll to seize, and you look at him with shock and say, “Wait, you WANT to go first? I was figuring you wanted the last say-so on who controls the objectives at the end of the game.” In reality, you know that he’s not going to be alive at the end of the game, and you also know that getting seized on will negatively impact your alpha-strike. You want to go first to make sure you inflict maximum possible damage and couldn’t care less about objectives. Part of the time, your opponent will put their dice back down – they only picked it up out of habit. Part of the time, they will say “I thought seizing the initiative was mandatory” and you can show them them it is not. And part of the time, they will roll anyway. In two of those scenarios, you’ve just gained a significant advantage.

Example #2: Your opponent is playing Mechanized Blood Angels and has six predators. As they’re deploying their Baal predators with flamestorm cannons near the front to scout/smoke and try living through whatever you do so that they can flame your wyches/beasts or anything else they can shoot out of a transport, you look at them with a bit of amusement and ask, “So you’re NOT going to outflank those?” Your opponent will have to think about it. Do they really want to risk losing their baal predator before it ever gets to shoot? It only take a single darklight shot to explode it…and you have SO MANY darklight weapons. Sometimes it will stay out…sometimes it will go into reserve. In reality, whether you could have exploded it or not is irrelevant. With a speedy list of your own, it was probably a turn 2 threat anyway unless you were wanting to move up and disembark trueborn to get shots. If it goes into reserve, its now a threat that you don’t have to worry about until turn 2. Or three. Or four. Until after you’ve had your way with everything else out there.

Example #3: Your opponent deploys a unit where you will have difficulty getting it. Or to it. Or getting LOS to it. Smirk and cover your mouth. Either they’ll think that putting their model there is a mistake and second-guess themselves, or they’ll think that you’re complimenting their tactical prowess. Either way, it’s a shot at stealing some of their confidence.

Example #4: Enemy unit or transport is moving up into assault range – a fight you may or may not win, but definitely not to your advantage to get assaulted. Smile wickedly, chuckle, and say, “This will be fun.” Your opponent will second-guess the wisdom of assaulting you, start crunching the numbers in their head, re-look at their unit locations and yours…

The goal here isn’t necessarily to get your opponent change their mind, but to lose their game-face and second-guess themselves. 40k isn’t just army vs. army, it is also player vs. player. The opportunities that you have to inject doubt into your opponent’s strategy are things you’re going to have to find and exploit, because everyone is different. But if you can tell that your opponent is struggling to make a decision about what action to take…inject some doubt if they make the one that would hurt you more.

And that’s it! The end of my advanced tips and tricks. Your army (via links at the top or other DE list discussions) has the tools to take down any army impudent and foolish enough to take the field against you. Now you have guidelines on how to use those tools to maximum effect, with the added benefit of turning your opponent into a quivering pile of self-doubt and eventual self-loathing.

Dashofpepper wrote: Before you start rolling dice, get angry. Not angry and unsportsmanlike…more affronted.

Statistically speaking, you're correct. Dice thrown in an altogether more aggressive manner have been shown to result in more 6's than those thrown more passively, or by people with weak wrists.

Dash makes some escellent suggestions here.... but there is an easy counter: Do what you want to do with your army!

Having read many of his batreps, it is clear that he takes a lot of confidence into his games. This, i find, is key to winning. My SoB have fared well over the past couple of years thanks to two things.

Firstly, i always believe that i can win. Never give up, always try to find a way to keep going! Even if half your army gets shot off the board in the first couple of turns, there is always some way you can put pressure on your opponent and take advantage of the situation: If you lose a lot of models early, you now have an easier time hiding from your opponent and choosing when and where to fight. Your opponent may also get over-confident and make mistakes; be ready to take advantage of them.

Secondly, and this is more general list-building advice: Build your army in chuks of relatively equal power. A typical SoB list has three main pieces; the deathstar (seraphim and tricked-out Canoness), the main course (SoB in rhinos), and the backline (Exorcists). All three parts have a roughly equal damage potential to your opponent, albeit at different ranges. Playing against an army like this is tough as you never know where to best focus your damage. Blast away at the deathstar and you will be shot off the board by the other two aspects. Take out the backline and you will find yourself tied up in assaults while the main course blasts what you have left. A balanced army is hella frustrating to play against.

Psychologically speaking, a good bet against most people is to 'play the fool'. Appear slightly careless when you move and shoot, pretend not to pay attention at important moments, appear impressed when your opponent tells you what his elite units are capable of....... But never lose your focus. You know how your army plays, and you know how to get the best out of it. This is what will win you most games, and is what you should focus on most (unless your opponents gf has a stunning clevage ofc )

Dashofpepper wrote:I wrote a Dark Eldar tactica, which involved some discussion of psychological tactics. Here's a couple pieces of it:

Part I: State of Mind:

...

This has nothing to do with psychology, Dash. You are saying that Dark Eldar should be played with maximum 100% ferocity because that's how they win. It makes sense, because they're incredibly fragile and offense-driven, so if they try to defend rather than attack, they're gonna die. But all of this emotional mumbo jumbo you mention is entirely unnecessary. You don't have to roleplay Dark Eldar to win with Dark Eldar. You simply don't.

In fact, I almost suspect that this post is, itself, a psychological tactic--trick your opponent into roleplaying his army instead of thinking clearly, and that's an advantage. When Dash says I need to throw my units away because that's what a real Dark Eldar general would do, then maybe I should do that! My own personal experience is that people who play Orks or Khorne armies (back when a Khorne army was a real, viable thing in 4th ed) do tend to roleplay their armies, which is to say they charge right into my close-range firepower like morons. I can't recall the last time someone beat me while roleplaying their army. I've played you on Vassal on the other hand, with your Orks, and you beat me not by going all out offensive, but by carefully avoiding my traps, ignoring my feints, and outmaneuvering me. You didn't beat me by thinking like an Ork.

Example #1: You roll for deployment option with your opponent and lose. It is an objective game, and he gives you first turn. You deploy accordingly. Your opponent deploys in response. He picks up the dice to roll to seize, and you look at him with shock and say, “Wait, you WANT to go first? I was figuring you wanted the last say-so on who controls the objectives at the end of the game.” In reality, you know that he’s not going to be alive at the end of the game, and you also know that getting seized on will negatively impact your alpha-strike. You want to go first to make sure you inflict maximum possible damage and couldn’t care less about objectives. Part of the time, your opponent will put their dice back down – they only picked it up out of habit. Part of the time, they will say “I thought seizing the initiative was mandatory” and you can show them them it is not. And part of the time, they will roll anyway. In two of those scenarios, you’ve just gained a significant advantage.

Example #2: Your opponent is playing Mechanized Blood Angels and has six predators. As they’re deploying their Baal predators with flamestorm cannons near the front to scout/smoke and try living through whatever you do so that they can flame your wyches/beasts or anything else they can shoot out of a transport, you look at them with a bit of amusement and ask, “So you’re NOT going to outflank those?” Your opponent will have to think about it. Do they really want to risk losing their baal predator before it ever gets to shoot? It only take a single darklight shot to explode it…and you have SO MANY darklight weapons. Sometimes it will stay out…sometimes it will go into reserve. In reality, whether you could have exploded it or not is irrelevant. With a speedy list of your own, it was probably a turn 2 threat anyway unless you were wanting to move up and disembark trueborn to get shots. If it goes into reserve, its now a threat that you don’t have to worry about until turn 2. Or three. Or four. Until after you’ve had your way with everything else out there.

I think both of these are incredibly bad sportsmanship. If your opponent is a veteran, he'll just think you're joking, or he'll look at you like you're stupid. This is only going to work on newbies who don't know any better. And really, do you need to intentionally give bad advice to newbies just to beat them? How pathetic is that? If noobs make a mistake in a competitive game, you're not under any obligation to help them. But I think that sportsmanship demands that you don't deliberately mislead them into doing exactly the wrong thing. A raised eyebrow here or there, a smirk, a shake of the head, I think these are legitimate ways to mislead your opponent. But actually using reverse psychology to instruct them to do the wrong thing? That's a really cruel and unsporting thing to do to a newbie (and a really useless thing to do to a veteran).


The one psychological tactic that I consistently use in 40k is bait. Most players only play the turn they're on. They don't think ahead to the next turn. Sometimes they don't even think about the objectives. Most players also prefer to kill something instead of nothing, even if the thing they kill isn't necessarily worth it. Thus, I will often put an expendable unit in the path of the opponent's biggest threat, hoping to bait him into an assault. And just behind the bait unit there will be tons and tons of firepower that, much of the time, the enemy will ignore. He gets to assault something with his death star, and that's all he's thinking about. It doesn't require me to lie to my opponent, or waggle my eyebrows, or anything silly like that. I just create a situation where the opponent thinks he sees an opening to damage me, without considering that he will sustain much greater damage in return. I've only seen one opponent successfully avoid taking bait, and that was Dashofpepper, in fact. This is not to suggest that I use bait tactics in every game, but rather that when I do use them, they work on the vast majority of players.

Dashofpepper wrote: Disruptive psychology is the art of making your enemy second-guess themselves, lose focus and make mistakes to your advantage. You could even call it a facet of social engineering. A smirk at a critical moment can change the course of a game. They key to this is to make comments or facial expressions designed to make your opponent believe that they either just made a mistake, are about to make a mistake, or just did something favorable to you (even if it isn’t). Some examples:

Example #1: You roll for deployment option with your opponent and lose. It is an objective game, and he gives you first turn. You deploy accordingly. Your opponent deploys in response. He picks up the dice to roll to seize, and you look at him with shock and say, “Wait, you WANT to go first? I was figuring you wanted the last say-so on who controls the objectives at the end of the game.” In reality, you know that he’s not going to be alive at the end of the game, and you also know that getting seized on will negatively impact your alpha-strike. You want to go first to make sure you inflict maximum possible damage and couldn’t care less about objectives. Part of the time, your opponent will put their dice back down – they only picked it up out of habit. Part of the time, they will say “I thought seizing the initiative was mandatory” and you can show them them it is not. And part of the time, they will roll anyway. In two of those scenarios, you’ve just gained a significant advantage.

Example #2: Your opponent is playing Mechanized Blood Angels and has six predators. As they’re deploying their Baal predators with flamestorm cannons near the front to scout/smoke and try living through whatever you do so that they can flame your wyches/beasts or anything else they can shoot out of a transport, you look at them with a bit of amusement and ask, “So you’re NOT going to outflank those?” Your opponent will have to think about it. Do they really want to risk losing their baal predator before it ever gets to shoot? It only take a single darklight shot to explode it…and you have SO MANY darklight weapons. Sometimes it will stay out…sometimes it will go into reserve. In reality, whether you could have exploded it or not is irrelevant. With a speedy list of your own, it was probably a turn 2 threat anyway unless you were wanting to move up and disembark trueborn to get shots. If it goes into reserve, its now a threat that you don’t have to worry about until turn 2. Or three. Or four. Until after you’ve had your way with everything else out there.

Dude, do you actually do this? If my opponent did this to me I'd be so annoyed. Not only is it bad sportsmanship, but to openly question your opponent's moves while he's making them in the manner you suggest is rude, arrogant & completely out of order.


Wow I just re-read the part "look at them with a bit of amusement and ask, “So you’re NOT going to outflank those?”". If my opponent said that to me I'd tell him to stfu.

Ixe and TheBlueRedPanda:

Awww...it's so cute that you two think that disruptive psychology is inappropriate during a simulated toy soldier game where we're ripping each others' heads off, blowing each other apart with explosive and light weaponry, screaming "BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD" with various Ork players around the room screaming "WAAAAAUGH!"

My opponents are lucky that the years of therapy have left me in a mostly peaceful state of zen that stops me from leaping across the table and eating them. My childhood with the Korowai tribe left me urges.

I'd humbly posit that you two should be playing Maple Story, or perhaps Hello Kitty Online. If you truly value interpersonal interaction, a less war-like game perhaps? Yu-Gi-Oh?

Dashofpepper wrote:Ixe and TheBlueRedPanda:

Awww...it's so cute that you two think that disruptive psychology is inappropriate during a simulated toy soldier game where we're ripping each others' heads off, blowing each other apart with explosive and light weaponry, screaming "BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD" with various Ork players around the room screaming "WAAAAAUGH!"

My opponents are lucky that the years of therapy have left me in a mostly peaceful state of zen that stops me from leaping across the table and eating them. My childhood with the Korowai tribe left me urges.

I'd humbly posit that you two should be playing Maple Story, or perhaps Hello Kitty Online. If you truly value interpersonal interaction, a less war-like game perhaps? Yu-Gi-Oh?

And he responds to our accusations that he's encouraging dickish behavior by... being a dick! Who woulda thunk it? WHO I ask you!?

In all seriousness, using the fluff to justify being a douche is kind of a sad thing to do. But I know you're probably joking because you're a rascal

IMHO it's more advantageous to appear weak where you are actually strong than to appear strong where you are actually weak.

Hammers and hypnotism.

Boss Snikrot outflanking will force some players to deploy too far in or well off the flanks especially when you talk him up during deployment

Battlewagon lists tend to demoralize people all by themselves, without further need need by me, other than having a great time.

An entire gunline failing to kill more than one of my battlewagons is usually enough to utterly demoralize any opponent to the point that they think shooting battlewagons at all is totally useless. And once they get a weagon to a screeching halt right in front of them, they realize there are still dozens of orks right in front of them, which will totally going to murder them next turn. Their most effective gun to handle this mess has been shaken by lootaz or koptaz and those spikey deffrollas will explode anything they touch.

Most non-veteran players start to panic now, trying to get out of the way, assaulting battlewagons in hope of their lone melta bomb doing something to it or even scatter artillery into their own stuff. It simply looks so scary that they fail to notice that simply being a gunline and keep shooting is the best choice.

You can't win a game without losing stuff, every ork player knows that from the first game when their first unit of boyz got shot. Other armies, especially space marine variants or all-mech lists tend to panic when they are about to lose a lot, even if the opponent is losing many of his own units in the process.

As a (noob) guard player I have found that taking a Deathstrike missile and telling stories about the carnage it has caused in the past has sometimes 'blinkered' people into going all-out to kill the thing before it fires, ignoring my much more dangerous units. It's always been far more useful for me as a bullet magnet rather than an offensive unit!

Dashofpepper wrote:Ixe and TheBlueRedPanda:

Awww...it's so cute that you two think that disruptive psychology is inappropriate during a simulated toy soldier game where we're ripping each others' heads off, blowing each other apart with explosive and light weaponry, screaming "BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD" with various Ork players around the room screaming "WAAAAAUGH!"

My opponents are lucky that the years of therapy have left me in a mostly peaceful state of zen that stops me from leaping across the table and eating them. My childhood with the Korowai tribe left me urges.

I'd humbly posit that you two should be playing Maple Story, or perhaps Hello Kitty Online. If you truly value interpersonal interaction, a less war-like game perhaps? Yu-Gi-Oh?

Are you for real?

We're ripping each other's heads off. Figuratively - within the simulated game.

We're blowing each other apart. Figuratively - within the simulated game.

However if you act like a douche while I'm making my moves, that is not within the realms of the simulation. Nor is it figuratively. You're simply being a douche. In real life.

Pathetic ploys like that simply will not work on most players - any player who's worth his salt already knows his army & knows what he plans on doing with it. Do you honestly think that by saying "whoa man, THAT's your move? haha LOL, such a n00b . . " that you will influence a player's decision? Maybe, but in all honesty, probably not, although it does make you come across as a bit of an idiot.

The only time I can imagine this working is if your opponent was a complete newbie, & he genuinely didn't know how to use his army - but in that case, why would you really need an advantage? A good player shouldn't have to resort to such clandestine tactics.

Dashofpepper wrote:the years of therapy

I think you need more of it.

Dash, did you run over the Emperor's cat? Forum-Inquisition is all over the place chasing you(again).

Panda: A good player? Unbalancing your opponent is one of the key components in most competitive games, from flicking cards to an annoying degree in card games, getting your opponent into a talk to take his attention of a game, professional poker players sending random signals, to even chess masters bringing their cat to a game, because he knew that his opponent was allergic to it.
Competitive play across games has been used to this for centuries. Warhammer40k is just not used to competitive play.

Everyone, please keep Rule Number One (Be Polite!) in mind. Even if one feels that someone else is not being a gentleman that is no reason to post in an ungentlemanly manner oneself.

Jidmah wrote: Panda: A good player? Unbalancing your opponent is one of the key components in most competitive games, from flicking cards to an annoying degree in card games, getting your opponent into a talk to take his attention of a game, professional poker players sending random signals, to even chess masters bringing their cat to a game, because he knew that his opponent was allergic to it.
Competitive play across games has been used to this for centuries. Warhammer40k is just not used to competitive play.

Don't get me wrong, I completely see your point & where you are coming from. I'm not arguing against 'unbalancing your opponent' as you call it, I'm merely arguing that out of a variety of manners in which to do so,the specific example cited by Dash seems to me to be largely ineffective at doing so, resulting in no true advantage, but merely lowering your opponent's opinion of you.

Now, I don't know about you, but the main reason I enter tournaments & try to win down at my FLGS is for the prestige & respect involved in being the best at something you like. However, if I played in the way suggested by Dash in his specific example, I think that any prestige or respect that other players had for me would be lessened due to the manner in which I had played my games.

Ultimately my point is this: Openly criticising/questioning your opponent's moves during his turn does not really offer you any sort of advantage - it simply makes you out to be a rude, arrogant player. There are other, more advantageous & much less annoying ways to gain the psychological upper-hand in a game.

That's just my 2 cents. Feel free to criticise, argue or otherwise disagree with my opinion . . This is a forum after all!

@Manchu - Sorry, I realise I can get carried away sometimes. 'Tis the debater in me.

TheBlueRedPanda wrote:Now, I don't know about you, but the main reason I enter tournaments & try to win down at my FLGS ....

I have to agree that using these kind of tactics in any kind of casual or even a friendly game would be very disrespectful. The only environment I would use psychological tactics is in a tournament where I wasn't playing with friends and there was a large prize at stake.

That said, as mentioned earlier the amount of success and the degree depends heavily on how skilled you are at giving misinformation via body language and how well your opponent interprets it.

I do agree that flat out asking why an opponent made a decision with a condescending tone is very insulting and I would be offended. Especially if it were someone i didnt know.

TheBlueRedPanda wrote:
Don't get me wrong, I completely see your point & where you are coming from. I'm not arguing against 'unbalancing your opponent' as you call it, I'm merely arguing that out of a variety of manners in which to do so,the specific example cited by Dash seems to me to be largely ineffective at doing so, resulting in no true advantage, but merely lowering your opponent's opinion of you.

Now, I don't know about you, but the main reason I enter tournaments & try to win down at my FLGS is for the prestige & respect involved in being the best at something you like. However, if I played in the way suggested by Dash in his specific example, I think that any prestige or respect that other players had for me would be lessened due to the manner in which I had played my games.

Ultimately my point is this: Openly criticising/questioning your opponent's moves during his turn does not really offer you any sort of advantage - it simply makes you out to be a rude, arrogant player. There are other, more advantageous & much less annoying ways to gain the psychological upper-hand in a game.

That's just my 2 cents. Feel free to criticise, argue or otherwise disagree with my opinion . . This is a forum after all!

You do realize that you can do that and mislead your opponent without being a dick, right? It's all in the manner of delivery and tone of voice. If I politely pointed out that you may not want to seize the initiative, hey, I'm just giving out an advice. It's my opponent's duty to take it or leave it. You can play mind games and not be an annoying douchebag.

And being good at mind games can also earn you prestige and respect. Just ask professional poker players and professional M:tG players.

starsdawn wrote:

TheBlueRedPanda wrote:
Don't get me wrong, I completely see your point & where you are coming from. I'm not arguing against 'unbalancing your opponent' as you call it, I'm merely arguing that out of a variety of manners in which to do so,the specific example cited by Dash seems to me to be largely ineffective at doing so, resulting in no true advantage, but merely lowering your opponent's opinion of you.

Now, I don't know about you, but the main reason I enter tournaments & try to win down at my FLGS is for the prestige & respect involved in being the best at something you like. However, if I played in the way suggested by Dash in his specific example, I think that any prestige or respect that other players had for me would be lessened due to the manner in which I had played my games.

Ultimately my point is this: Openly criticising/questioning your opponent's moves during his turn does not really offer you any sort of advantage - it simply makes you out to be a rude, arrogant player. There are other, more advantageous & much less annoying ways to gain the psychological upper-hand in a game.

That's just my 2 cents. Feel free to criticise, argue or otherwise disagree with my opinion . . This is a forum after all!

You do realize that you can do that and mislead your opponent without being a dick, right? It's all in the manner of delivery and tone of voice. If I politely pointed out that you may not want to seize the initiative, hey, I'm just giving out an advice. It's my opponent's duty to take it or leave it. You can play mind games and not be an annoying douchebag.

And being good at mind games can also earn you prestige and respect. Just ask professional poker players and professional M:tG players.

Hmmm, I don't think you understood my argument correctly, you are arguing the same point as me. I 100% agree that you can mislead your opponent & gain a psychological advantage without being a dick. That was precisely my point.

However, when you say things like (and I quote) “Wait, you WANT to go first?" and when you look at your opponent 'with a bit of amusement' and ask “So you’re NOT going to outflank those?” - then you are acting in a manner which I would construe as 'dickish'.

As you pointed out - it's all in the manner of delivery and tone of voice. Therein lies my argument. The manner of delivery & tone of voice in which Dash purportedly attempts to gain a psychological edge is obnoxious & annoying - as you pointed out, you can mislead your opponent without being a dick.

Dashofpepper wrote:Ixe and TheBlueRedPanda:

Awww...it's so cute that you two think that disruptive psychology is inappropriate during a simulated toy soldier game where we're ripping each others' heads off, blowing each other apart with explosive and light weaponry, screaming "BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD" with various Ork players around the room screaming "WAAAAAUGH!"

My opponents are lucky that the years of therapy have left me in a mostly peaceful state of zen that stops me from leaping across the table and eating them. My childhood with the Korowai tribe left me urges.

I'd humbly posit that you two should be playing Maple Story, or perhaps Hello Kitty Online. If you truly value interpersonal interaction, a less war-like game perhaps? Yu-Gi-Oh?

I've heard about this one guy who will drink a bottle of liquor during tournaments and gets all loud and obnoxious as a result.
As a happy drunk myself, I've dealt with the stigma that lots of drinking comes with, and the looks even close friends will give me when I'm reaching the bottom of a bottle.
Is this a valid psychological tactic? To be disruptive while drinking? Perhaps the mild mannered of our scene would be intimidated by that.

Any opponent who is not 15 years old will not be impressed at all by any jumping around and screaming. He will either continue to concentrate on the table and the sitation or just pack his things and leave to play with someone less psychotic if it is only a casual game.

Use a weapon with a high volume of fire, like a punisher, and mow down all of their boyz in 1 volley, even if those grunts are insignificant, the enemy will be worried about your next target and make everything retreat/go to ground, allowing you to advance the army!

Use three Deathstrikes in one game.

Honestly, just seeing an army with a unit they don't like to face can demoralize weaker opponents.

I've seen people effectively give up a game before it started once they saw my 120 model army get on the board. People have grimaced when they realize I'm running 45 lootas and 9 killa kans.

I'll even go as far to say that my army build is specifically meant to take advantage of psychological aspects of 40k, in that the entire point of it is to cause my opponent to have difficulty in determining target priority.

SW Razorfang spam lists shooting all their missiles, lascannon, and other heavy weapons into my kans and ignoring my lootas or into my boyz in an attempt to knock my big mek out. Or a BA player that shoots his predators at my kans and lootas while ignoring my deffkoptas.

Better players, though, won't be fooled by this.

Play just in a swimsuit.
More of a "dude, what?" tactic than offensive.
Invite the opponent to do the same, repeatedly.