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MrMoustaffa wrote:

DarkHound wrote:Especially now that the game is so complicated, you might not be able to make an informed judgment on whether your opponent utilized their options correctly. If you're discussing this with other Guard players, you might get bad information and make bad strategies. All it takes is one skilled player of that opposing faction to weigh in and say 'yeah, your opponent made this mistake, I'd have played it like this, so the strategy you're considering won't work in the future.' That cross pollination should be the goal of a tactics forum.

Yeah but the problem is what kind of tactics are left that are able to cross armies? You know, stuff that every army needs to know. A lot of stuff that used to be available for every army is gone now, you know, usr style pysker abilities, tank shock, universal damage tables, usr's (stuff like "is zealot worth taking") most of those are gone.

I agree with you that there doesn't seem to be a lot of common tactics between armies.

MrMoustaffa wrote:And even there, much of this varies so much faction to faction for example that an eldar player isn't really going to have much genuine advice for someone like a guard player beyond "I hate it when guard player did X, but Im not really sure exactly what he did."

This is where I think you're underestimating collaboration. My point was not that a Guard player can learn the same tactics as an Eldar player. Instead, each player can bring their deeper expertise to a discussion. If an Eldar player says "I hate it when a Guard player does X" the Guard player can say "I know about X, here are its limitations." Or if a Guard player says "I beat my local Eldar using my strategy Y, I think I should invest more into it" then an experienced Eldar can say "Eldar have CP/formation/unit Z which counters Y" and they can discuss the best strategy in that situation.

If the Guard and Eldar player are never in the same room, never seeing the same discussions, then you can't get that collaboration. Any player has easy access to the rules of every other army. I can easily look up all the CPs and all the formations. What I don't have access to is the experience of playing every CP and unit.

sieGermans wrote:Eh, for the Necron Tactics thread, we’ve had other faction players come in to ask for advice on countering Necrons and I’ve seen fantastic responses providing detailed discussion on how their faction can best counter ‘crons.

Maybe it’s a bit of unnecessary shyness?

This makes me hopeful. I still think the problem isn't shyness but visibility. Lots of players would be interested in a discussion of how to counter Necrons. The problem with a megathread is that the vast majority of players can't see when that is being discussed. God help you if you try to search for that information.

If the discussion was a separate thread, players would be able to see the topic title; even if they weren't actively looking for that discussion, it would pique their interest. They may even realize they have something to contribute, or another question to ask.

sieGermans wrote:Too many opinions presented as fact. Too much hostility to alternative interpretations. Too many dismissive tones toward new voices.

...an inactive old guard of pleasantry and warmth shown to budding commenters.

Exactly this.

MrMoustaffa wrote:Things are moving so fast now, especially for competitive play, that I'm amazed people have time to test lists at all. Unless you are proxying heavily or just already have a massive collection, most of the most dominating units and strategies are nerfed within 6 months, which can be difficult for the average Joe to follow.

Because 99% of people aren't testing or experimenting with alternative builds. They are copying what they see better players finding success with, and calling it THE way to play their army, and thinking that's what competitive play is. Seems most people would rather play a second army than build a deeper collection, or experiment with different stuff in their current one. Which is totally understand, it's easy and efficient. But people need to stop pretending that they have all the FACTS about EVERYTHING on their faction when they play like this because nope.

MrMoustaffa wrote:Also, I've noticed other forums also going to a general style format. /Tg/ has been overrun by generals, and Facebook has groups dedicated to every faction that you can imagine that function the same way. I'm sure Reddit is this way too but I don't bother with them. I'm not sure why multiple forums all switched over to this style around the same time, but it's interesting to see. Definitely has its pluses and minuses.

What does this mean?

vipoid wrote:I would suggest that a big part of the issue is that many of the tactical elements have been removed from the game.

Hence, most of the actual decisions come down purely to list-building. And once you've got a few solid builds to focus around, there really isn't much else to discuss.

Ha. Hahahahahaha. Good one.

Nitro Zeus, I'm essentially talking about how "generals" aren't just a thing on dakka. Go to other forums and you'll notice a lot are making these megathreads like what we see in the tactics forum

What are generals sorry? That’s not something I’m familiar with

 greatbigtree wrote:
I can say the game shifts too fast to create meaningful content that lasts.

It feels that way, for me and almost every other 40k tactics creator it's a hobby, but instead of making tactics write-ups and stuff like that you have to do house-keeping in your old tactics write-ups as things change, great if you're a career 40k tactician but not only is it a chore, it means I have less time to be sure of something being right before I can post about it. I can't say whether Heavy Destroyers going from 50 pts to 37 pts is absolutely certainly definitely going to be the new meta unless I've playtested them 10 times and done some math on the subject, the more opinionated an article is the more worthwhile it might be, it might also be the opposite if you get something wrong. It's also hard to know exactly what people want in terms of learning, having a mega-thread where you can chime in every time someone asks a question is easy and if you're wrong you're probably going to get corrected.

 Vaktathi wrote:
In 5E, I'd talk about using a chimeras to tank shock a unit into a clump so another can roll up and use its heavy flamer to whack everyone at once while keeping frontal armor pointed towards the enemy mainline. Mechanics like that aren't terribly relevant anymore, both units would just get within 8" and get their D6 heavy flamer auto hits and none of the other stuff is relevant. Now, the scales the game is trying to play at basically demands that level of abstraction, but there's just less to work with as well if one is after deep tactics.

Try charging in your Chimeras, end the charge within 0,99", use you pile-in and consolidation moves to move within 0,98" and 0,97" respectively and move within 1" of enemy units you didn't charge, you minimize Overwatch while maximizing the number of units that cannot shoot. I don't think tactics are dead, maybe I just never played against anyone in previous editions that had mastered the system and 8th is more interesting because more people have a deep enough understanding of the game to do things other than point and shoot. Deep Striking was so random and OP armies so straight-forward in how they could win games that I don't think previous editions were very tactical. You couldn't bunch up three Wraithknights with tank shock and use flamers to take them out, you either played a faction that had the guns to take them out or you didn't.

 Nitro Zeus wrote:
What are generals sorry? That’s not something I’m familiar with

The current paradigm, threads covering everything for a faction as opposed to the earlier paradigm of threads covering one specific tactic. I think the Articles section needs a massive amount of love, I don't know why so few people are doing things for them, people are so opinionated but they don't write up articles. I also do stuff on another website so I don't want to spend too much time creating dakka articles, especially when I know there are career tacticians that are probably doing it better in a third place.

OH its literally the topic... god I'm dumb. I thought it was like some term for a style of commenter or something lol.

Reddit doesn't do generals. But it also condenses competitive discussion and tactics questions, in with results, and "rate my list" threads (so goddamn many of them) all in the same category. Also Reddit has to be the worst platform of all for discussion because if you say something that goes against the grain even slightly, the mindless groupthink will literally downvote your statement until its invisible. So reddit has it's own set of problems - but generals aren't one of them at least!

 DarkHound wrote:
Back when Dakka was my go-to forum, 40k Tactics was my section of choice. It was a mix of noob questions, wild theories, and tournament talk. Now there's a lively mega-thread dedicated to each faction, but there are so many factions that these threads cover the top of the forum. It's honestly hard to see new threads crammed between the factions. Very few new topics are created, and they garner hundreds of views with only a couple comments before fading away.

As a (functionally) new player, those megathreads are extremely unhelpful: there's too much to catch up on and contribute to the conversation. More over, there doesn't seem to be discussions of the game in general, or even of specific aspects or match-ups; everything is so siloed.

It sounds like your complaint is "TL/DR". For new players it shouldn't be to difficult to read a couple of pages of an internet forum. As to the ghosts who never post or reply, I think it's more of your tl/dr attitude. Most people nowadays aren't looking for a conversation with strangers, they'd prefer a 5 minute YouTube vid.

 Red Marine wrote:
It sounds like your complaint is "TL/DR". For new players it shouldn't be to difficult to read a couple of pages of an internet forum. As to the ghosts who never post or reply, I think it's more of your tl/dr attitude. Most people nowadays aren't looking for a conversation with strangers, they'd prefer a 5 minute YouTube vid.

That is hardly new. The lurkers have always vastly outweighed the people who post.

I actually agree with you to some extent. The tactics that it's also used to be a lot more lively.

Most of the tactics discussion that you're describing has moved over to r/Warhammercompetitive. that's more generalized tactics discussion and not faction based so much. Lots of list questions too.

I think it's also the nature of forums to some extent to as to why this has shifted. Previously forums were one of the more accessible routes to getting information from a community on armies, general tactics, etc (and still is!). But now with the advent of social media with blogs, podcasts, and videos, a lot of beginner stuff is already covered in a format much more digestible than a forum usually provides. Goonhammer for example, does a fantastic job with their start competing series.

 Trickstick wrote:

 Red Marine wrote:
It sounds like your complaint is "TL/DR". For new players it shouldn't be to difficult to read a couple of pages of an internet forum. As to the ghosts who never post or reply, I think it's more of your tl/dr attitude. Most people nowadays aren't looking for a conversation with strangers, they'd prefer a 5 minute YouTube vid.

That is hardly new. The lurkers have always vastly outweighed the people who post.

True, but I was speaking about the last 15 years or so. YouTube is 15 years old. I think you'd be more right in the 90s.

 flandarz wrote:
I believe most of the "megathreads" devote the OP to which units/sub-Factions,/whatever to take and which to avoid, so that should, at least, give you a decent idea of where to start as a new player. If you have more specific questions, you could always make a new thread, or just drop a line into the ones already there.

Well, kinda. Some of them don't start for a while, so the 'OP' about unit comparisons is actually 10-15 pages in, and that's about the index units. Where the useful information begins is something of a mystery. And the frequent breaks for pages of 'nu-uh,' 'yeah-huh' disagreements don't help matters any.

 Red Marine wrote:

 DarkHound wrote:
Back when Dakka was my go-to forum, 40k Tactics was my section of choice. It was a mix of noob questions, wild theories, and tournament talk. Now there's a lively mega-thread dedicated to each faction, but there are so many factions that these threads cover the top of the forum. It's honestly hard to see new threads crammed between the factions. Very few new topics are created, and they garner hundreds of views with only a couple comments before fading away.

As a (functionally) new player, those megathreads are extremely unhelpful: there's too much to catch up on and contribute to the conversation. More over, there doesn't seem to be discussions of the game in general, or even of specific aspects or match-ups; everything is so siloed.

It sounds like your complaint is "TL/DR". For new players it shouldn't be to difficult to read a couple of pages of an internet forum. As to the ghosts who never post or reply, I think it's more of your tl/dr attitude. Most people nowadays aren't looking for a conversation with strangers, they'd prefer a 5 minute YouTube vid.

Strawmanning the problem won't help.

The Tactics Megathreads are unwieldy. There's no topical boundaries, irrelevant content frequently makes its way into the discussion, and each thread is dominated by competition for attention.

If there's something I'm wondering about, I'm more likely to find someone to talk about it with on Facebook / Reddit / Bolter and Chainsword / Discord. Usually with a stranger.

I've never seen a 5 minute video on YouTube talking about 40k tactics. Lots of 2 hour battle reports, that's about all I can think of. Can you point me at one so I know what you mean?

 techsoldaten wrote:
I've never seen a 5 minute video on YouTube talking about 40k tactics. Lots of 2 hour battle reports, that's about all I can think of. Can you point me at one so I know what you mean?

Try something like D6 Evoloution. They aren't 5 minutes (more like 10-15), but they explain things like how to screen, how to get the most out of consolidation, close combat tricks etc.

 techsoldaten wrote:
I've never seen a 5 minute video on YouTube talking about 40k tactics. Lots of 2 hour battle reports, that's about all I can think of. Can you point me at one so I know what you mean?

I've been watching Auspex Tactics recently. Decent little overviews of things. Sometimes makes mistakes, but is very good at responding to comments and adding corrections for things.

I think that Tactics posts are best thought of as heatsinks. They offer a place for all of the freeform discussion to gather, which takes some of the nonsense out of other threads.

 Trickstick wrote:

 techsoldaten wrote:
I've never seen a 5 minute video on YouTube talking about 40k tactics. Lots of 2 hour battle reports, that's about all I can think of. Can you point me at one so I know what you mean?

I've been watching Auspex Tactics recently. Decent little overviews of things. Sometimes makes mistakes, but is very good at responding to comments and adding corrections for things.

I think that Tactics posts are best thought of as heatsinks. They offer a place for all of the freeform discussion to gather, which takes some of the nonsense out of other threads.

I'll throw in a good review for Auspex too. Very good quick primers on things to get you good enough acquainted with them so you're not as surprised the first time you fight them. He's not going to show you every trick to beat something or run it, but he'll explain the basics well enough for most people to work with and that's invaluable for learning about armies you don't play. I feel that kind of content is far more useful to the average new player than most tactics threads these days. There's just so much rules out there you really need a lot of stuff outside your main army or opponents condensed into a nice bite sized bit of info or you'd never be able to keep up with the meta right now.

Echoing/summing up the earlier posters:
1. A lot of "generic" tactics don't exist anymore, the game is much more diverse in terms of army archetypes and possible ally combinations as well. The increased lethality of 8th also means "point the right gun at it" (or enough of the wrong guns) is usually the answer unfortunately. I'll add a counter-argument to the OP: perhaps with a new player influx the "generic tactic" threads were actually the clutter? Because if someone wants to win games, they want to do it with a specific army and tailored advice is going to be more useful...if you play pure Custodes then articles about cheap screens are worthless. There's a decent amount of reference to said tactics in the faction threads, but it's tailored to what a specific army can bring.

2. Tactics has moved to Spotify/Apple Music/blogs. You now have most well-known players and a bunch of relatively unknown ones producing their own content, and there's a simple, practical reason why that works: Would you rather listen to Lawrence Baker explain to Nick Nanavatti how he won a GT with Grey Knights, or read how greyknight12 thinks you should play the army on Dakka? Removing anonymity makes credibility a factor; plus you have the constraints of forum medium to deal with.

 greyknight12 wrote:

2. Tactics has moved to Spotify/Apple Music/blogs. You now have most well-known players and a bunch of relatively unknown ones producing their own content, and there's a simple, practical reason why that works: Would you rather listen to Lawrence Baker explain to Nick Nanavatti how he won a GT with Grey Knights, or read how greyknight12 thinks you should play the army on Dakka? Removing anonymity makes credibility a factor; plus you have the constraints of forum medium to deal with.

Both those options sound equally awful, if in different ways. But skipping bad advice in a readable thread is far easier, faster and superior to listening to people blather on for 15 or 20 minutes.

Reading, I can pick up ideas and move on.

Listening to something for actual information requires attention and a lot more time invested (and that assumes the speakers care AND are capable enough to present the information in a well organized and coherent fashion, and most aren't) Audio and video blogs are good for light entertainment/background noise, but terrible for conveying information in a useful way.

I’ll get off your lawn, but a picture is worth a thousand words dude...and you can’t read while driving to work. But a lot of said content producers also have blogs. The point I was making is that you can self-filter the content down by “someone who actually knows what they’re talking about” (Whether that’s real or perceived) as opposed to trusting a random poster on Reddit. One is a supermarket, the other a thrift store; both are valid but your shopping experience is going to vary.

The tactics section seems to have 1-2 players per general thread that perceive themselves the all knowing experts of that faction and any kind of thinking outside the box is immediately dismissed. Zero flexibility and wedded to cookie cutter lists that tournament players invented

 Elfric wrote:
The tactics section seems to have 1-2 players per general thread that perceive themselves the all knowing experts of that faction and any kind of thinking outside the box is immediately dismissed. Zero flexibility and wedded to cookie cutter lists that tournament players invented

And that I imagine is an issue with listening to the tournament "superstars" too. You're only getting ideas for those types of lists. Seems to be the way the game is discussed online these days though.

I find threads where the first post is a summary of different pieces of the army and their uses to be quite helpful. Like the genestealer cults thread. When such a post has not been updated in years, though, I am a bit lost in the fog because I do not know if the information within is still relevant. Like the tyranids thread (last updated early 2018).

But it is still more helpful than something like the daemons thread, which is useless unless I have a specific question to ask.