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 Ailaros wrote:
. People don't talk up people who consistently win at backgammon, despite the fact that there is some amount of skill in that game as well.

Backgammon is pretty serious business in certain parts of the world. And while luck is acknowledged there, it's still not considered what sets apart top players.

pretre wrote:Poker is a completely different game from Blackjack. Just as 40k is.

Poker is certainly different than blackjack and 40k, but that doesn't make 40k different from blackjack.

They are both games where randomness determines the outcome of events, and player skill is entirely defined as playing the odds.

pretre wrote:40k is not craps. If it was, we could save ourselves a lot of trouble and not have to use these big tables and time consuming models.

I think you're missing the entire point of 40k.

The point of 40k is to have big tables and models, and being able to play a game with them. If what the point of 40k for you is to win, then you have to accept that 40k is, in fact, a complicated game of craps. Or yahtzee. Play against a gunline some time and you'll see exactly what I mean.

DarknessEternal wrote: And while luck is acknowledged there, it's still not considered what sets apart top players.

Sure, people can take lots of random-element games too seriously. It doesn't change the fact of the random elements.

People have been trying to pass off luck as skill since time immemorial. That doesn't actually make their luck skill, regardless of their perceptions to the contrary.

 Ailaros wrote:
The point of 40k is to have big tables and models, and being able to play a game with them. If what the point of 40k for you is to win, then you have to accept that 40k is, in fact, a complicated game of craps. Or yahtzee. Play against a gunline some time and you'll see exactly what I mean.

That's just crazy talk.

The point you are missing is that 40k on the table is not the whole game. 40k is a game of list-building, deployment and tactical movement/warfare. Only one part of that is governed by dice.

Craps or yahtzee has no player skill input. You can win craps the first time you play it. Even if you make every single roll you attempt the entire game (which is very improbable), you will still lose your first game of 40k.

I have played against gunlines many times. If you deploy poorly and do not have an answer for gunlines, guess what? you're going to have a bad time. If you deploy well and have answers to gunlines in your list, guess what? You can actually do pretty well.




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In my personal experience for every game of 40k that was wholly decided by dice and not player skill there are 10 more that were decided by player skill.

Well I'm not trying to say that 40k has no player skill. I'm saying that player skill is defined solely as playing the odds for your dice.

Building a list, for example, sets the odds of you killing your opponent's stuff. Bring no anti-tank, and you're going to have long odds against a land raider. Bring only minimum scoring units, and your opponent doesn't need to be very lucky to kill off all of your scoring units.

Furthermore, said skill runs out really fast. List building is a skill, for example, but how hard is it really to just copy a netlist? You can hit the skill ceiling for list building pretty fast. Likewise, most other things are pretty straightforward, whether it's movement or target prioritization. The learning curve may be steep, but the actual skill ceiling is low.

This means that player skill becomes a control variable quickly. Even when it is less of a control variable than 100%, skill is STILL defined as playing the odds. Just because you know the odds does not mean that you will always succeed. That's for the dice to decide.

 Ailaros wrote:
Well I'm not trying to say that 40k has no player skill. I'm saying that player skill is defined solely as playing the odds for your dice.

I think this is a vast oversimplification.

List building is a skill, for example, but how hard is it really to just copy a netlist? You can hit the skill ceiling for list building pretty fast.

This is a common misconception. Net listing is actual a negative for most player skill. The top players at the top tables rarely have net lists. They have custom lists that are particular to their skills and styles.

Likewise, most other things are pretty straightforward, whether it's movement or target prioritization. The learning curve may be steep, but the actual skill ceiling is low.

I see this as a cop out. It begins to sound like 'the only reason I don't win every single game is because of my dice'. I think the idea of a skill ceiling is a nice idea but how many people do you imagine have hit that ceiling? How many people can play at that ceiling after 4 games in a day? 8 games in 2 days? 11 games in 3 days?

This means that player skill becomes a control variable quickly. Even when it is less of a control variable than 100%, skill is STILL defined as playing the odds. Just because you know the odds does not mean that you will always succeed. That's for the dice to decide.

I think that dismissing skill in this fashion is silly. Again, if skill was a control variable, then the same people would not be able to win repeatedly. you have said that the ceiling for skill is low. If this was so, than the top places at major 40k events should be evenly distributed amongst the people that have met this skill ceiling. This is simply not the case. There is a very small group of individuals who place high in major 40k events. The idea that they have just been lucky over the course of years in events that have 8 games and hundreds of participants is extremely improbable.

 Ailaros wrote:
Well I'm not trying to say that 40k has no player skill. I'm saying that player skill is defined solely as playing the odds for your dice.

As a competitive gambler, I can assure you that 40k is accurately compared to poker, and inaccurately compared to blackjack.

40k and poker (Texas Hold'em, to be specific and relateable) deal you a hand (or in 40k's case several units in your army). It is up to you to decide what hands have the best odds against what flops (or opposing unit matchups). I'm not going to send flamervets against terminators and hope for "luck" and I'm not going to play 7/8 unsuited when the flop is A/K/K. In Poker, you would fold that hand. In 40k, you would not approach that matchup. The odds are unfavorable for you.

In 40k, and poker, you choose your matchups, and you have to choose which ones are favorable. 40k is odds manipulation.

Blackjack, craps, and roulette are not. They are probability. Once you are in on a hand of blackjack, you "act" (hit/stay/split) based on the odds you are given. The only time this specific situation of "forced odds" is in play is when you have only two choices with your unit. For whatever reason you can't run them away, you can't divert the opposing unit with another of yours. You have plasmavets with a meltabomb and you have to kill a chimera. Now you have to play your odds. You shoot, or charge. If the dealer is showing a 10, you have to hit. If the chimera is at 3 HP, you have to use your meltabomb. If the dealer is showing a 4, you stay. If the chimera is at 1 HP, you fire your plasmaguns.

Blackjack has clear cut odds that you make a call on.

40k and poker give you the liberty of playing/making/choosing matchups that are favorable to you.

That is why 40k requires skill, not just luck and math. That is why Canadian Poker Rooms pay for my Forge World orders, and why I hit the Blackjack tables when I need some Zen time.

-Capt

pretre wrote:

Ailaros wrote: I'm saying that player skill is defined solely as playing the odds for your dice.

I think this is a vast oversimplification.

How do you define player skill?

pretre wrote:if skill was a control variable, then the same people would not be able to win repeatedly. you have said that the ceiling for skill is low. If this was so, than the top places at major 40k events should be evenly distributed amongst the people that have met this skill ceiling.

If everybody's luck was the same, then yes, you would see an even distribution.

The fact that you don't is evidence that some people are luckier than others.

TheCaptain wrote:Blackjack has clear cut odds that you make a call on.

40k and poker give you the liberty of playing/making/choosing matchups that are favorable to you.

Certainly. I will gladly accept the nuance that 40k's player skill has a bit more meaningful contribution to the game than blackjack. I can't say for your particular kind of poker, as I know nothing about it. If you can win a game of whatever you're talking about without ever revealing your hand, then it's not what I'm talking about, but if you can't, then it is.

In any case, as you say, you're playing the odds. It's still odds. It's still a random element that determines if you win an event (or aggregate of events, called a "game") or not.

Furthermore, I'd also posit that there aren't "right" odds to play, either. Being riskier by placing more bets on longer odds, is not necessarily any better or worse than placing few bets on shorter ones. Player skill in this case doesn't cause you to play better odds, it instead allows you to play your odds more exactly to the odds that you want to play.

In the end, though, playing the odds exactly the way you want to play them won't win you a game of 40k. It's only the dice that decide that.

If you want to look at very large horizons, say, thousands of games of 40k with millions of dice events, then sure, I'd bet you could see a real difference in a person with better player skill playing against another. A person with 1% more exact odds-playing (aka "skill") would, I suppose, win 1% more games, as you approach infinity where luck starts to finally become a control variable.

To say that a person won a few GTs in a row, and is therefore better, on the other hand, is just silly.

 Ailaros wrote:
If everybody's luck was the same, then yes, you would see an even distribution.

The fact that you don't is evidence that some people are luckier than others.

lol Gotcha

To say that a person won a few GTs in a row, and is therefore better, on the other hand, is just silly.

Why? Do you truly believe that someone plays 6-12 games and purely ends up in the top 3 based on luck? Repeatedly? Do you understand the kinds of odds that would be required for that to happen again and again?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
At this point we are largely talking past each other. I will probably let it go. My understanding of your point is that you believe that at a certain skill cap (easily obtainable) the influence of dice is overwhelmingly the decider for game wins.

I guess before I comment any further, I would like to see some battle reports where this is true. I.e. Two players who have hit the skill cap and the outcome of their game is largely decided by dice. edit: As we started in the beginning of this thread, this is almost never true. In almost every case, deployment, tactics or list building contribute more to the loss than the dice.

Yes.

Amongst thousands of players, it's very possible for a few of them to have a few key die rolls go their way every time. Especially if we're only talking about what amounts to a few games of 40k.

Put 1,000 people in a room and have them flip coins ten times apiece, and, on average, one of them will manage to flip heads 10 times in a row.

Meanwhile, if what you are suggesting is correct, then the best player should win every tournament, every time. This certainly has no empirical backing.

pretre wrote:I guess before I comment any further, I would like to see some battle reports where this is true. I.e. Two players who have hit the skill cap and the outcome of their game is largely decided by dice.

I don't think you've read enough of my battle reports, then

Plus, even if I showed you some, you could argue that it's mostly skill, rather than luck due to a definition of skill that you refuse to share. Until we can agree on just what player skill in 40k actually does, then yeah, we will always be talking past each other.

 Ailaros wrote:
Yes.

Amongst thousands of players, it's very possible for a few of them to have a few key die rolls go their way every time. Especially if we're only talking about what amounts to a few games of 40k.

Put 1,000 people in a room and have them flip coins ten times apiece, and, on average, one of them will manage to flip heads 10 times in a row.

Ugh, dragged back in.

So you are saying that basically (and we'll take one event and one player)... Tony rolled heads 8 times in a row three years (I think it is three) in a row. That's it. Do the odds there. Even ignoring every other player that's what... .5^24 or something like that. So you're saying it is more likely that he randomly won 8 games in a row, 3 years in a row to win the Nova than skill played a deciding factor in those wins. Come on, pull the other one. (works out to 5.96 x 10^-6% chance of occurring or somesuch)

Meanwhile, if what you are suggesting is correct, then the best player should win every tournament, every time. This certainly has no empirical backing.

I did not say that random chance did not influence results, but I believe skill is a higher decider. When two opponents of perfectly matched skill play, then a die roll may turn the battle.

Perhaps a better way of defining your thesis would be this:

"If skill is exactly equal, then die rolls (luck) will make the difference in the game, if all other things are equal."




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 Ailaros wrote:
I don't think you've read enough of my battle reports, then

Plus, even if I showed you some, you could argue that it's mostly skill, rather than luck due to a definition of skill that you refuse to share. Until we can agree on just what player skill in 40k actually does, then yeah, we will always be talking past each other.

I have read every single one of your battle reports posted on your site, so yeah, I'm familiar with the breadth of your work.

 Ailaros wrote:

pretre wrote:I guess before I comment any further, I would like to see some battle reports where this is true. I.e. Two players who have hit the skill cap and the outcome of their game is largely decided by dice.

I don't think you've read enough of my battle reports, then

Plus, even if I showed you some, you could argue that it's mostly skill, rather than luck due to a definition of skill that you refuse to share. Until we can agree on just what player skill in 40k actually does, then yeah, we will always be talking past each other.

But Ailaros, and I say this with utmost respect and zero offense intended, I've noticed a lot of your losses are subject to a few things:

-Bad codex-strength matchups (your recent loss against Necrons)
-Running a poorly optimized list
-Lack of certain list-specific elements
-Exploitation of the "Ally" resource (A rune priest or two )

Your lists entirely lack plasma, flyers, and anti-horde. Disagree with me if you will, but those are some incredibly vital elements to any IG list. You can't honestly say your loses are solely luck-based when you refuse to incorporate such things, especially when they are some of the strengths of the Codex you play.

Again, no offense, but you're running bolterboat Chimeras, Vanquishers, an Exterminator, and a Lord Commissar

Your list is very against the grain, and there is a reason the grain is so established. It wins.

How are you liking the mech list btw? It almost seems like blasphemy for you to not field hordes but you seem to be enjoying it which is more important than anything in this game.


Now have any of you ever even played backgammon? Skill wins that game hands down and if you say otherwise then you have never played anybody good. The games with professional gamblers in them can and are determined by skill, not luck as the professional is a skilled worker by definition.

Now I also must disagree with you as I have been on both sides of the luck factor and seen skill be more important. I have played games where I made every save and hit with 90% of my shots but was out maneuvered and taken apart piece meal.

I have also won games where I missed every shot but planned my scatters so they would still do damage (13 scatter results in a row bad enough for you?) still won the game due to good blast placement and sucking my enemy away from his objectives.

This is a game you can win without ever having a single successful role with a good enough plan in the movement phase. It is in fact chess with dice or poker with models.

I agree you had bad luck and if not for your bad rolls would have won. However you had key points where you simply made the wrong decision. Fortress deployment would have undoubtedly been better and pask probably should have been repositioned being two of these. I am not the pinnacle of 40k strategy and tactics, however, it is conceited and probably not true that you are either. Not that it matters though as your games are what they should be: engrossing to the point where a few rolls of the die see you feel something and hopefully fun for you (I know fun for me as I enjoy reading them)

There is some amount of skill needed for 40k, no one is denying that, however there is only so much skill can do for you in a game based on rolling dice to see if you succeed or fail. Once you reach a certain level of skill, it really boils down to who is Lady Luck smiling on the most. Take any game, and even if your opponent is a complete moron, if you are rolling cold all game you will lose. All the skill does is minimize the chance of failure.

Actually ansacs if you don't have a successful roll in this game you are going to lose, no matter how good your skill and how well you planned.

That is not true though if you play a complete moron then you could win without ever rolling a dice.

You play foot guard(you deploy on one objective) without any weapons with S6 or above and I will play mech guard. I promise you I will win if you play as a complete moron. You can even use loaded dice.

Right, and on the off chance you fail to make any rolls to hit and fail all your saves, and that foot guard player gets lucky with his heavy bolters, or whatever... Then you lost due solely to luck.

I'm not seeing why it is so hard for you people to see its a game of chance. Do you roll dice for it? Yes, then luck plays a key factor in it. Poor luck makes that anti-horde weapon useless, it makes terminators over priced tin cans, ect. If the dice turn cold, and your not making any roll, you lose.

ansacs wrote:How are you liking the mech list btw? It almost seems like blasphemy for you to not field hordes but you seem to be enjoying it which is more important than anything in this game.

Well, I like me my foot lists in general, of course, but I was only really emotionally behind it whilst trying to convince people in 5th ed that foot guard was as good as mech guard, which saw me branded as a crazy person.

In 6th ed, though, mech lists are so much blatantly better than foot lists. Not only could you tell by reading the new rules, but all of these many games spent trying to make a foot list work while I slowly built up the cash for vehicles shows it as well. I'm pretty sure I did every class of foot guard over those 30-odd games, and never was I all that terribly happy with it (though the carapace army of doom was kind of cool).

Now that mech madness has disappeared (despite vehicles getting relatively better than foot lists, go figure), I feel safer getting into it. Now that I actually have some of the models, I can start to really play with it. There are certain things I'm already liking, but it's still kind of early to tell. This is an unfamiliar style to me, and I think I'll need to have a bit more experience with it to really break the style in and get to play around with it more.

pretre wrote:Tony rolled heads 8 times in a row three years (I think it is three) in a row.

But not every die roll is equally important. Not every one has the same impact on the game. It's more like Tony flips 100 coins, and gets 50 heads and 50 tails. Only t of those flips were REALLY important, though, and they were all heads for Tony. In this case, you have to look at the 5, not the 100.

If my opponent rolls snakeyes for Coteaz's psychic powers one turn, but coteaz doesn't take any other damage for the remainder of the game, then the fact that he took a wound from an unlikely perils roll doesn't matter to the outcome of the game. Likewise, I'm pretty sure we can all agree that the roll to determine who goes first is usually more important than any other single die rolls.

In any case, I'll make my point before, we need to have an agreement on what the word "skill" means in this context.

TheCaptain wrote:I've noticed a lot of your losses are subject to a few things

I take no offense, as I don't have the pretension of perfection. If literally all I wanted to do was to have exactly the best possible chances of winning, then yeah, I'd quick jam 3 vendettas into my list, or do any of the other things you mention.

But they only increase the odds. They don't win the games per se. I furthermore, of course, question how much they increase the odds by. If I have a list that's 98% as good as the best list, I would only notice that my list was worse after playing 50 games. Now let's say it's only 90% as strong as it could possibly be. That's only doing something noticeable one in 10 games. And that's "noticeable", not "I lose a game because of".

And that's a part of it really. I certainly could do lots of stuff to eke out a tiny bit more list power, or a tiny bit better target prioretization, or any of a number of things, but, as implied, those tiny changes are going to have tiny impacts.

Meanwhile, the impact of passing 5 3+ saves with the last guy on an objective is HUGE. In this case, literally game breaking. Not to say that you should never try to get better, or to continue to hone those tiny things, but moreso to have humility in the understanding that the more and more you do, the smaller and smaller gains you make, and the less they matter compared to the dice.

ansacs wrote:This is a game you can win without ever having a single successful role with a good enough plan in the movement phase.

This is categorically false. You will never win a purge game, and against an opponent with even the slightest competency, never win a game with objectives either.

Seriously, go to your FLGS and refuse to shoot a single gun or engage in close combat of any sort, or ever pick up a die and roll it. Let me know how many games you win.

ansacs wrote:That is not true though if you play a complete moron then you could win without ever rolling a dice.

Right, and that's one of the things that I think makes what I'm trying to say difficult to understand. It's less of a either or, and more of a matrix. Yes, against really bad opponents, they're going to need a LOT of luck to win, while, no matter how bad your dice are, practically speaking, you can still win against a terrible player.

What's pertinent, though, is when you only look at the other side of the spectrum. Two players who are already reasonably proficient in the game with reasonably well-powered lists, that's when you start to see what I'm talking about. It's when you have two good players with two good lists that the skill difference between them is small, and these kinds of effects become obvious.

ObliviousBlueCaboose wrote:I'm not seeing why it is so hard for you people to see its a game of chance.

I think it's a pride thing. People, including myself, I should note, have spent a lot of time and energy on something that does have some element of skill to it. It's easy to fall into the trap of "I worked hard, so I deserve my successes". It's not just true of 40k, but also true of life in general. Just look at people who go in for prosperity gospel as a sickening example.

And being proud isn't the worst sin (I'm not a Catholic, after all...), and if people want to delude themselves into thinking that they have control over the uncontrollable parts of their life, then whatever (I'll still be annoying to people about it, though). Of course, it can pretty quickly spiral off into unhealthy attitudes about things. Looking at bad dice and saying it's not the dice it's the player is on the same level of argumentation as saying that poor people deserve to be poor, or that victims deserve to be victims.

Probably the strangest thing in person was a few years ago here on dakka with dash of pepper when I first started writing about things like this. At the time he boasted about playing a high-stakes 40k game where a monthly mortgage payment was on the line. How he could look in his left hand and see a mortgage payment and look in his right hand and see some dice and not come to the conclusion that he was gambling with his house, I can't possibly imagine.

 Ailaros wrote:

TheCaptain wrote:I've noticed a lot of your losses are subject to a few things

I take no offense, as I don't have the pretension of perfection. If literally all I wanted to do was to have exactly the best possible chances of winning, then yeah, I'd quick jam 3 vendettas into my list, or do any of the other things you mention.

But they only increase the odds. They don't win the games per se. I furthermore, of course, question how much they increase the odds by. If I have a list that's 98% as good as the best list, I would only notice that my list was worse after playing 50 games. Now let's say it's only 90% as strong as it could possibly be. That's only doing something noticeable one in 10 games. And that's "noticeable", not "I lose a game because of".

And that's a part of it really. I certainly could do lots of stuff to eke out a tiny bit more list power, or a tiny bit better target prioretization, or any of a number of things, but, as implied, those tiny changes are going to have tiny impacts.

Except you should know by now that list composition has a huge impact on said list's effectiveness.

Okay I will admit that opponents of equal skill and inspiration the outcome is luck based.

This is however not capped in any way. There is always someone of greater skill and inspiration can strike in the middle of a match.

I once won an objective game against a mech parking lot by running all my empty vehicles into the enemy deployment zone and blocking him in which left me free to capture all the objectives. My firing at him was a secondary thought and was unnecessary as he did not bring enough AT to kill all enough vehicles to open his movement until the 5th turn and some good terrain placement blocked 3 objective from his line of sight (one of which he placed). It is possible to win without actually rolling anything against a list that simply doesn't bring anything that can hurt you. Players of somewhere near equal skill with lists that have something in them to allow the player to react has an element of luck but this is not by any means the determining factor and saying it is is a form of predestination or removing responsibility for your losses from your own shoulders.


I am happy that you are playing around with a new list style that seems like you are having fun.

Have you thought about experimenting with plasma guns vets as you seem to really like the plasma pistols or is that to in grain (net listy)?

Also did you like outflanking the chimeras cause you can outflank/infiltrate storm troopers or harker in a chimera with pretty decent success. (actually harker squad is kinda awesome with a chimera).

The same thing works with Al'Raheim with squads in chimera. Individually the squads are underwhelming but together they can be devastating. (the 12 inch move onto the board side is pretty great)

I really enjoyed reading this! Thanks for going to the effort of posting, a narrative style report - I will definitely be looking out for more.

I have an experiment for you all to give an indication of how important you think luck is to the outcome of a game.

Given a 2000 pts game, how many points would you be willing to give up before you would feel it would significantly affect your chance of winning?

For me it would be no more than 50-100 pts or about 2-5% of the total.

In a very rough analogy that would indicate that a 2-5% difference in player skill would also significantly affect the chance of winning.

In an even rougher analogy that tells me that my feel for how much luck influence the game is in the region of 2-5%. Taking the average over several games that is. For a single game luck plays a much bigger part!


Comments are welcome!

Depends who/what I am playing against and with what. I used to regularly play two to one (3000 pts versus my 1500) with my eldar in 3rd edition which was much less tactical than 5th and 6th ed.

I still sometimes play 2000 to 1000 or 1500 against some opponents or when I pull ahead too far I will sacrifice large portions of my army in interesting and unique ways but in ways I know to be tactically unsound just to even the game back up. I have even played a game 3 to 1 (this one I was admittadly lucky so yes there is some luck component, however I also kept 2 of the opponents at who were close range opponents at long range while dealing with the long range opponent). So your test actually does little to persuade me of lucks importance but rather reconfirms the importance of maneuvering and manipulating enemy range and line of sight.

Like I also said before I regularly used to be trounced by a dark eldar player who simply out maneuvered me so even with perfect rolling I would still have died. (Man I would love to play that guy again now, he beat me so bad it is embarrassing, I don't remember actually killing even a quarter of his army in any of my MEQ vs Dark Eldar matches)

What you seem to not understand is that if you do not maneuver your troops into the proper positioning then you will have 0 chance to win no matter your luck. Try this test 10 IG men with loaded dice(all 6s) and lasguns versus TEQ with loaded dice(all 1s) now you never close within 24" and see how many of them you kill. Yeah, that was a trick question cause the answer is zero you do not have range. If you change the TEQ to have a single weapon with >24" range and not use loaded dice for just them then you will lose outright.

Luck is 1 of 4 elements and the effects it can have are determined by the other 3 elements so it is a dependent variable.
1) Units(aka what did you bring)
2) Positioning(where the unit is deployed/moved to)
3) Match up(shooting with a lascannon vs bolter, vs a tank or vs a GEQ)
4) Luck(This ones weight changes as you change the others, the max number of shots and thereby damage is determined by 1, 2, and 3; the armor saves made can be totally negated by #3 using the lascannon, etc.)

The weight of luck is not zero, sure, but it doesn't determine a win or loss directly if you would have planned for your luck being bad you can change results. Heck its why I stopped playing all terminator DA due to my 1s rolling streak (yeah I have rolled 7 1s in a single 10 dice roll). My luck with TEQs used to be a legend in my gaming store back 10 years ago, so I switched to more bikers and dreads so those 1s didn't hurt so bad.

Finally a great saying, "Chance favors the prepared mind." a wonderful misquote of Louis Pasteur. (It should begin with "In the field of observation...but its better this way)

@ansacs: I'm not primarily trying to make a point, I'm asking a question.

Let's try another formulation:

You are facing someone with exactly the same skill as you and you agreed that the game would be 2000pts. For the sake of argument let's also assume you will play exactly the same list, except you will remove some models as a handicap before the game starts.

How many points worth of models could you remove before you would start to feel your chances of winning are significantly reduced?



This is by no means an exact scientific measure, but might give a hint on how much people believe luck matters to the outcome of a game.

Skill doesn't translate exactly to point, but sometimes when you discuss something that is hard to measure (player skill) discussing something analogous that is easy to measure (points) can give you fuzzy but still useful insights.



My personal opinion is that at my skill level 50-100 pts won't matter that much. In other words even if starting with 1900-1950 pts I'd still feel I had a good chance of winning. Giving up 200 pts (an entire leman russ) would feel unconfortable and if I gave up 500 pts I would feel I'd need to be REALLY lucky to come out ahead.

ansacs wrote:I once won an objective game against a mech parking lot by running all my empty vehicles into the enemy deployment zone and blocking him in which left me free to capture all the objectives.

That doesn't sound like two players of equal skill playing against each other to me. It sounds like you beating up someone who forgot to bring anti-tank weapons.

In any case, it seems like you and I have a different definition of "skill" with regards to 40k. How do you think that skill transmits into victory here?

ansacs wrote:Luck is 1 of 4 elements and the effects it can have are determined by the other 3 elements so it is a dependent variable.

I don't think you quite understand how luck works. Randomness is always an independent variable.

As we've been saying, you can do simple things, like bringing a decent list, deploying it correctly, and shooting at targets based on what's the biggest threat - things that will improve your odds (and this player skill is how well you are able to play the odds you want), but you're still playing odds. The dice still decide if you are successful or not.

ansacs wrote:Have you thought about experimenting with plasma guns vets as you seem to really like the plasma pistols or is that to in grain (net listy)?

I am liking these plasma pistols but I'm not yet ready to lose my precious meltaguns to do so. In the case of the sarge, he can't take melta pistols, so it's no big deal, but for the regular dudes, I'm too scared to abandon the melta hedge.

ansacs wrote:Also did you like outflanking the chimeras cause you can outflank/infiltrate storm troopers or harker in a chimera with pretty decent success. (actually harker squad is kinda awesome with a chimera).

The same thing works with Al'Raheim with squads in chimera. Individually the squads are underwhelming but together they can be devastating. (the 12 inch move onto the board side is pretty great)

Yeah, someone brought this up over on the army list thread, and I am very inrigued by it. My only problem with al'rahem is that he costs a lot, so I'd need to make some rather structural changes to my list that I'm not ready to make yet. Well, that and I don't have nearly enough chimeras to start running armored fist platoons.

The harker thing is VERY interesting to me, though. I'll have to give it a try at some point. The next league probably won't see me playing many games above 1000 points, but I might be able to squeeze him in.

@zoat
Now that is a more interesting question though again I still don't think you can necessarily say this is related to luck.

However I will play...In 2000 pts I would be willing to remove up to 1/3 of my vet squads ablative wounds in a mech guard list or up to 1/5 of my foot ablative wounds before I stopped having a fair chance to win the game. As soon as I go beyond this I will not be able to reduce the maximum damage potentials to my squads enough to account for what my opponent can bring against me. I will still probably loose against an equally skilled opponent at this point and actually reducing my squads would increase the weight of luck as the maximum damage potentials would be relatively larger of a percent of what I can lose but still win. Such is the truth as you decrees the model count you increase the weight of random results. This is why the weight of luck is heaviest at the beginning and ends of games cause the beginning your control of the maximum damage potentials are often at their highest and at the end the model count is at its lowest meaning any single result can change the game.

@Ailros
I agree that was an example for when you can win without needing to fire a shot. There are currently 4 opinions in this thread
1) Luck Rules all.(Not sure if anyone is actually in this group)
2) Skill Cap, Luck Rules (Ailros)
3) No skill cap, luck is a variable (Me)
4) Skill is all (Not sure if anyone is actually in this group)
I think the extreme opinions are actually people overstating their arguments but perhaps not so I listed them.

I understand randomness fine. There are maximum and minimum results. These maximum and minimum results are controlled by your and the other persons actions.
Example: I have a certain chance to die in a plane accident...I don't fly and that chance goes to 0 there is no chance at all and so that variable is dependent upon me flying.
Example: I try to wound a MC so I shoot it with a lasgun, the MC has toughness 8 so the chance goes to 0. I try to shoot it with a lascannon and the chance skyrockets an infinite amount to 1.
Thereby as can be seen any random result is also controlled in its magnitude by the actions and motions involved. Nothing is ever truly random however everything has some degree of random aspects. So by controlling the maximum damage that can be inflicted to me and increasing the maximum damage I can do I can artificially "improve" my luck. This is what fighting is all about and these principles has served me well both in that and in WH40K.(which is weird but hey)


How about trying harker in a squad with plasma vets and no lascannons to make up the points. There is only 1 unit in the game that you will really miss the melta guns against(land raiders) as the double tap against side armor will normally give the same result of destroying your target. This will also give you a right hook punch that has some real punch against anything (I would seriously put a HF on the chimera here cause you should get a flamer shot off every game and in our previous discussion we had agreed the damage of a HF hit is the same as 4 turns of snap firing HB)

This would be turn 2 or 3 roll up HF/snap fire ML enemy squad, then 6 12" S7 AP2 shots and 3 S5 AP4 shots. If we are talking a a MEQ/GEQ/TEQ/MC/or less than AV12 side armor your should be able to kill it.