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Well I wouldnt mind the tactics board too much, it does have some rather interesting topics, if it werent for all the topics that keep getting reposted. I hate seeing "Sluggas or choppas" and "which imperial guard tank" topics that pop up every few weeks

Its like an ocean, most of it is undrinkable salt water but theres a few fish that you'll have to reel in

Meh, I still think there's some worthwhile tactics advice on the forums. Even when someone is disagreeing with me about something I'm not arguing with them to change their mind, I'm pointing out their errors so that someone reading might have some more information with which to make up their mind.

It takes a little time, but you can usually tell who knows what they're talking about and who doesn't.

Yuber wrote:
I used to post alot of advice in Dakka, and then theres the tide of retardation from alot of players who just paperhammer.

The list include, but is not limited to:

-Comparing Tac Sqauds to Strike Squads when both have different roles.
-Suggesting tailored units for the list just to beat a single list it has trouble from. (i.e. suggesting to bring lots of flamers against genestealers, when you can just stay inside cover and shoot)
-Suggesting really absurd and impractical scenarios (Killing a landraider and beating the hammernators and null libby inside - why the hell would you do that?)
-Trying the MSU template on every army
-Suggesting lists that are only good in paper but never in practice (triple Blood Crusher Spam + fateweaver)
-Suggesting a 1 dimensional solution to a 3 dimensional problem (Suggest defeating necrons with triple monoliths by phasing them out- but never advicing how and why, specifically)
-Arguing which landraiders are the best when each has a very specific role.
-Suggesting an assault cannon is a better weapon over the lascannon when beating AV14 simply because mathhammer says it has a higher probability (4% doesnt mean dick; this grinds the gak out of my gears)
-Rock-Paper-Scissor argument (Unit X is useless because Unit Y defeats it)

I agree. A lot of the advice you see now is either too myopic in scope (the player only talks about experiences in their own, small gaming group and think that applies to the hobby at large) or they repeat what they hear elsewhere. This is somewhat understandable, and a lot of gamers go through these phases as their knowledge of the game grows, but it certainly isn't going to be the best advice in most cases.

@labmouse42
I understand your frustration. It is easier to bitch than to take action. The old guard did take action, though. We started threads with really good info, I even wrote forum guidelines for the tactics section. No one follows them. I doubt most people have read them. The good threads got burried in bad and were only visible for a few hours.

It was a pointless battle. We're not bitter about it, at least I'm not, we tried to keep the content of this and the list section high in quality, but without dedicating silly amounts of time to it, would not really change anything.

So now, a lot of us dont bother coming in these areas as it is largely a waste of time. A lot of guys went off to start their own blogs or just lurk and then ask each other for advice.

I'm not mad or sad about it or anything, as I don't think most older guys are, it just is what it is.

All that said though, for a new player, or someone willing to Wade through the less useful stuff, this still is a great place to talk 40k with some really knowledgable and cool gamers to get advice from.

Different people have different level of understanding, and perhaps a different level of ability to understand. You cannot compare the analytical capabilities of a 12-year old with the ones of a 35-year-old gamer who has played Wh40k since the beginning. It is the internet, so you are bound to meet all sorts of people. To criticize the forum for it is to criticize the internet and human nature. Good luck with that.

Perhaps vets observing a degeneration may be falling victim to their own experience - the more you learn about something, the greater the number of things that now seem trivial, soon boring, and a bit later, annoying. Is it really a change of the site or a change in oneself?

Regarding utility, there is always something new to learn, so I keep coming back. I'd rather have less of certain types of posts, but have quickly learned to identify and skip them.

That is a very good point. Increased skill decreases the amount of information that educates you.

And as I said, this is still a great place to come and learn, but it has definitely, in objective terms, changed.

When I first came here, there was a fraction of the users there is now. It was a smaller community of players, mostly dedicated tournament gamers. The quality of advice was extremely high, not even comparable to any other site on the net.

It wasn't all good though, the atmosphere was downright nasty. GW called this the shark tank of 40K. It was like the wild west, people were rude, flame wars were rampant, and it put a lot of posters off.

However, if you could handle the insults and big egos, this was THE place to learn how to get better at the game.

There still is a lot of really good advice here, but with the increase in post count, a lot of which comes from younger, or less experienced gamers who while totally free to and entitled to contribute to the community, tend to drown out the best information. The signal to noise ratio has shifted dramatically. The kind of really off the wall or poor advice we used to chuckle about that came from other boards, was now being said here.

But like I said, this isn't a bad place, I still love and ma loyal to Dakka, but it has really changed. You certainly still can learn a lot, particularly as a beginner. But as this question pertained to veterans, in that context, no, this is no longer the best place to come for cutting edge tactics and list design.

What if there were a forum that had some limitation on posts, perhaps more dedicated to long-form discussion of tactics (as opposed to advice, which is what many of the tactics posts are). The moderators could select some number of members in good standing to be the core membership, and these members could vote others in if they had a good track record of posting quality content. Maybe everyone could reply, maybe limit who could reply, I'm not sure what would be best. Advanced Tau Tactica has a similar system, and from the limited time I've perused that site they seem to have a pretty strong content generating group.

It's a tough question, isn't it? How do you keep quality high while also keeping the membership high? How do you qualify content without hurting people's feelings?

It is tough. Yakface has expressed the philosophy that he would rather see a friendlier Dakka with lower quality content, than the admittedly nasty Dakka of years past with higher quality content.

Dakka is a million times nicer now than it was, no doubt. It remains for the individual to decide if he or she wants to stay.

I think it would take some creative thought to come up with a middle road that kept everyone happy and the quality of content high, but I am sure there is a solution.

I think you would have to make a forum with limited posting privileges more than just a "tactics forum for special people". The current tactics forum would remain what it is, while this alternative forum would have to focused in such a way that limiting posts made the forum more useful. Whereas Tactics would be a great place to spitball ideas, and brainstorm (important things, to be sure), the New Forum might have each initial post be several paragraphs of an idea already fairly well developed, and additional discussion would refine it, report playtests, etc.

There's already a sticky of good quality tactics threads at the top of this forum, maintained by Manchu.

It appears to me that Manchu already works really hard to weed good quality discussions out of the noise of the Tactics forum and preserve them up there.

In my experience, creating forum-within-forum elite groups just creates more problems than it solves--and also generates a ton of hard work and hurt feelings. IMHO Manchu's sticky is perfectly adequate, and probably under-used by visitors of this forum.

Users who wish to post their own tactics ideas within Dakka (rather than starting a blog of their own) can and do use the articles features at their own discretion. I've been planning to extend my single article post into a series, but ran out of time until after 'ard Boyz.

Fair enough.

I think Manchu is doing a good job.

If you want better content, write it.

I still benefit from the tactics forums. Its nice to get feedback on other peoples opinions on the value of certain units or strategies.

Flavius Infernus wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

rdlb wrote:Legoburner! Yakface! Hello up there

Start a tactics feature with articles written by these veterans and give them the power to moderate their own discussions.

You could start it out slowly and pick someone you trust. Just do one at a time.

There is a sticky archive of especially good tactics threads that Manchu maintains at the top of this forum. There's a lot of really good information in there already.

I agree that some of those are great, especially when starting a new army, but there are not that many, and there are not many that are new. I think more new good stuff is what we are after here.

I like to see other people's opinions on units I use.

the player only talks about experiences in their own, small gaming group and think that applies to the hobby at large

To be fair that's all a person can talk about: what they've experienced. Take out the word "small" as it applies to tournaments as well. Each group (local gaming club, group of friends, regional tournament, whatever) has a set of lists that can be expected. Each is kind of like an organism that is constantly changing and adapting to itself. Like an ecosystem would be a better analogy.

Anyway, the point is that you can only really give advice based on the groups you know of. As an example, my game store owner was preparing for a tournament. There was a Tau list that he knew that he couldn't do anything about and would be very hard pressed to get beyond a tie. Of course, if that list was taken to a tournament it'd be tabled round one. Now imagine the local gaming environment revolving around the style of that tau list, whatever it may be. Among the players there, everything is balanced and different units become useful (lets say there's a lot of infantry only armies for whatever reason. Massing melta guns becomes far less useful. You'll keep anti-tank, but it'll be less necessary).

Just because tournament advice is the most competitive so to speak doesn't mean it's the most useful, and that's not from the "fluff players just want to have fun and not to win" point of view. Tournament style advice just isn't the best in different environments.

Which goes back to the chess problem analogy. I also think that it's a far better way to discuss tactics (mainly because they are tactics) than simply advising to take more wave serpents and min fire dragon squads. And as for the original question, I can't imagine anyway saying they don't brows the tactics forum at least occasionally considering the location. I look in pretty often mainly to see if anyone has anything interesting, or anything related to Eldar (aspects). But usually I only get through a few posts each because they start feeling like the same information.

@Flavius
Good point, I did forget to mention that. There is a slew of good info that Manchu has graciously put together and in the article section. However, I think the OP's question was the forum itself, although he could very well have meant the entire area of the site.

@Ail-Shan
You make good points, but I think you missed mine. I wasn't implying that only tournament players had viable opinions. My point was that there is a syndrome of thinking that what works, or does not work, for you is true for everyone and that anyone who doesn't agree with your limited way of looking at things is wrong.

Of course we can only speak from our own experiences, or what we have read, anything else would be making things up. But to think that only your point of view of experiences matter is what I was saying was to be avoided. It sounds like a "no kidding" kind of statement, but on the internet especially, you see it all the time.

My first game of 40k was Rouge Trader, long ago at a con in So Cal. I didnt play at all for years and then got into it big with the release of 4th ed. Since then i have been playing. I would say that i still benefit from the tactics discussion in two ways.

1. I really enjoy passing on what i know and talking with others about the armies that i play. I gain insight into the game from sharing with them what i have learnt. Though i am by no means a great player i am improving a lot as of late. It was like a switch got flipped in my head and lots of new angles to the game which had seemed so one dimensional before; became suddenly apparent.

2. I gain a lot of insight from others sometimes in that my thinking can be to linnear. When i post questions or read other forum responces it kindles a new thought process for me and i really feel like some points and suggestions others have made have genuinly improved my play. Lots of times its the small things that others pass on to me that make these big changes.

Over the past year i have drifted away from playing my nids (sold) and my orks (sold) because they played to one dimensionally for me. Orks rely to much on brute force and nids just suck in their current dex. Now my old fall back marines are all i play and the lists i play are the product of the reading i do here and lots of games on my part. I no longer play a static gun line or a heavy armor big shooting list. I play a finess list with lots of fast attack and rely more on tactics that i pick up here and there. Now i play my marines like eldar.

So in a long winded way, yes i still get something out of tactics threads. sometimes i learn from my opponent and sometimes from all of you.

Welp, you got new people to the game like me.

"OHHHHH, you can remove ANY figure."

I benefit less from this sub-forum than I did, say, 6 months ago. I do still frequent here more times a day than any other part of Dakka as I enjoy reading about what ideas other people might have come up with, whilst simultaneously arguing constantly about why they're wrong and that unit actually sucks.

L. Wrex

Lycaeus Wrex wrote:I benefit less from this sub-forum than I did, say, 6 months ago.

Very true, I think this coincides with what others have mention about the "degrading" of quality. Most advice here isnt too bad per say, just more catered to people who are new

Well, many thanks to everyone who has chimed in to mention the tactics archive sticky. Here's the bottom line about me: I'm a "tactics outsider." Unlike some of the other moderators, I don't know the game inside and out much less win tournaments so you won't find me generating any great insights -- more like begging them off of some of our great users (a few of whom have posted in this thread). So that explains why I created the stickied thread: I wanted a place to file away information that someone like me -- i.e., an average player with extremely limited competitive experience -- found useful and worthy of careful study. By all means, please suggest threads to be included in the archive, either via PM or by posting in the thread itself. Thanks to everyone who has already contributed -- your work is truly fascinating, even for those who aren't looking to start or improve playing your chosen army.