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I have been listening to a lot of 40k podcasts recently and have noticed something, why is it folks in the US believe that player skill comes second to building a good army list?

It would seem that UK players believe that a skilled player can take a not very competitive list and do well with it and I am trying to understand the US view point.

If its something thats common to just the US, then I feal bad for the rest of the world. I had thought that it was fairly widely accepted that most tournements are won or lost at the list level but I could be mistaken.

It's all about the META man, the META!

Seriously though, I don't listen to a lot (or any) of the 40k podcasts, but I wouldn't say that player skill comes second to a good list, and I'm from the US. Honestly I'd say that I feel both are about equal with each other. I mean, on one hand, it's hard to win a game with nothing but lasguns, but on the other hand, you still have to possess a modicum of intelligence to know how to use even leafblower.

They don't say that. They usually qualify the list-building by saying "a bad player with a good list will lose to a good player with a good list, but if the good player has a bad list then he'll still lose."

List-building is a massive part of 40k. It plays the largest role, so long as you can play it decently.

*Wonders if Dashofpepper will see this thread*

A good list is the foundation for your game. With a poor list it will be very hard even for a great player to win. That being said, list making should roll into a players skill level. I rarely see a great player with a horrible list unless they are trying something odd. Now I have seen horrible players write good lists, and they can win half the time with them.

Good list and good player go hand in hand.

Catyrpelius wrote:...I had thought that it was fairly widely accepted that most tournements are won or lost at the list level but I could be mistaken.

This does indeed explain the prevalence of comp restrictions in many tournaments all over the world... including UK, amirite?

Like a lot of the folks responding, I believe that player skill doesn't come second to list building. The two are completely related and dependent when it comes to winning.

I look at it like this...

Your codex/army book is a tool box. The list you build contains the specific tools you bring to the job/battle - you can't bring the whole tool box. A good general selects the best tools and also knows how to use them effectively. This is why list building is important. The most skilled person is not going to do well at a carpentry job if he/she only brought a soldering iron, a plunger, and a wrench (i.e. plumbing-type tools). You at least have a chance of doing well if you have a good set of universal tools that work well together. But that just allows you to possibly succeed, depending on your skill and the nature (as well as the difficulty) of the job.

List building is part of the game because a good general knows which tools work well in which scenarios, and ensures he/she has those tools. I agree, leontheconfused, that skill of the general is critical, but a general whose army has only a bunch of Nerf weapons is going to have a heck of a time beating someone with real weapons. I'm not saying its impossible, just that the two generals (Nerf vs. lethal) are not fighting the same fight. Believe me, I know just how to build a nerf army with my Witchhunters... its fun, and fluffy, but I will lose unless I pull something out of my nether regions AND the stars are aligned in my favor. That fun/fluffy list doesn't provide me the tools I need to win in any consistent manner.

leon, please note also that just like the media, podcasters either have something to say and/or are trying to increase listeners. What is more entertaining, extremes and false dichotomies, or the boring middle full of grey areas? Your opening statement is sort of like saying that all folks in the US are just like people on TV or movies, and all US cities are just like what you see on The Wire...

Gymnogyps wrote:all folks in the US are just like people on TV or movies

Nah, don't listen to him. We're all gun-toting John Wayne types constantly jumping from exploding buildings/cars/trees just to get through our daily grind until we get home to our supermodel wives who are actually spies for the government.

Gymnogyps wrote:This does indeed explain the prevalence of comp restrictions in many tournaments all over the world... including UK, amirite?

Comp is relatively uncommon in the UK.

Ugh, no, playskill is at least as important as list building. This game is not a game of two lists slamming into eachother.

The problem is that playskill can be very nebulous. How do you quantify using blocking strategies to make the Tau competitive? How do you quantify force splitting to collapse ork offensives? How do you determine target prioritization and its role in the game?

I think some people like the idea that list building is really important, because when they lose it removes some of the 'plays badly' and replaces it with 'well, my army/list/etc. is fluffy and lacking Unit X, so I can't compete.'

I'm not sure what being an american has to say about anything, but I agree that list building is ultimately marginally more important.

As said, the list is the toolbox. A master can not work if he does not have the proper tools, whereas a novice can get decent results with crude strategy if the tools make the job so easy, it's basically point-and-click.

When I see battle reports, I can usually predict who is going to win based simply off the army lists, and I'm usually right. The only times I'm not are when someone was bone headed in the player skill department and the other person wasn't.

Basically, the only time I see player skill as making a difference to the ultimate outcome of a game is when the lists are both equally powerful, at which point how they're used is the deciding factor.

Remember, mistakes on the field can be corrected. Mistakes in the list building last all game.

I love the fact so many players think they can download skill by recreating the metalist of the month and show up to every event and crush people...

Metalists are statistically forgiving and play the odds... Most of these lists don't play themselves and still require familiarity with the list and skill of tactics regardless of the list. Even the leafblower loses when the player doesn't know how to use it.

And the idea that list building is skill is marginally insulting. Even a 12 year old can page through a new codex and pick out the best units in about 10 minutes. We all know how to figure out what units are cost effective, overpowered and terrible for the points. The idea that somehow if you don't choose to play an optimized metalist that somehow you are 'not skillful at list building' is condescending and wrong most times... but that is the attitude people seem to have. Not taking an optimized list or unit doesn't mean you are instantly going to lose, it just means you have to play better and not expose your weaknesses and work harder to maximize your strengths.

"Feh, look at that moron not playing an optimized metalist... he must suck!"

Lists mitigate risk and make things easier. Skill and tactics and extreme familiarity with your chosen codex also mitigates risk. Since a majority of people at tourneys lack this personal skill where they are actually familiar with and practice with their codex, there is this huge focus on 'listbuilding'.

People who are successful at tourneys are usually people who are extremely familiar with their chosen codex or extremely familiar with 40k as a whole and have played ooodles of games. People who show up with metalists which they have never played or barley played lose at these events. Lists can't save you.

I don't agree with the idea that list-building is more important - as time goes on, i find that I can win regularly with a poor/mediocre list as long as I know the list inside out. I rarely play enough games to ensure this happens, though!

A 'good' list may just be an example of one where it is obvious how to use it properly, therefore requiring less practice/knowledge to get right. I tend to build very fluffy armies, which often look awful on paper. But after playing with a couple of them for years, I know them inside out, and can now beat lists which, according to interweb wisdom, are much more 'powerful' than mine.

Does practise and this sort of knowledge come under 'player skill'?

Or does this all merely mean that the army always had a 'good list', and it just took me a while to figure it out?


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nkelsch wrote:We all know how to figure out what units are cost effective, overpowered and terrible for the points. The idea that somehow if you don't choose to play an optimized metalist that somehow you are 'not skillful at list building' is condescending and wrong most times... but that is the attitude people seem to have.

This. When the accepted 'strongest lists' can be grabbed off the internet in five minutes by anyone with half a brain, 'list-building' loses a lot of value.

Most 'US' lists I have seen would get 0 Comp in the tourneys I have participated in...

Screw comp in a tournement. Thats like showing up to a tournement and shouting, I'm Not Here To Win!

When I'm at a tournement I play to win. With that I spend weeks building and refining my list so that I either a direct or indirect counter to every possible army I could go up against. While skill is important for this to, I wouldnt be able to do anything with a poorly built list. Maybe my Meta is just more competitive then most.

I honestly don't think you can rank one above the other. Even the "powah" list will eventually come up against somthing that was made to smash it. Does that make the other list the new "powah"?...no it dosen't. I'm pretty sure it's up to the players to adapt to different situations using some skill. Say you have a poorly skilled player with a good list against say a skillfull player who had 15 min to throw somthing together to play, I'd put my money on the skillfull player. Too sum it up...a moderatly skilled player will not just make a "bad" list it may be lacking in some areas situatonally but then that's where skill comes in.

leontheconfused wrote:It would seem that UK players believe that a skilled player can take a not very competitive list and do well with it and I am trying to understand the US view point.

I think the US see list over player for a couple of reasons

1.) Terrain
2.) Game size

Most of the pictures or youtube reports of games I have seen in the US seem to consit of one large LOS blocking bit of terrain near the centre of the board, and then a couple of other bits of terrain normally placed in each quarter. Because of the lack of terrain, a lot of the US armies tend to lean more towards shooting and is one of the reasons why you can say a list is more important than the player, as it's about how much you can pump out and take before moving around the board to claim objectives or finish units off. Also in the US they seem to regularlly play 2000 point games while in the UK we tend to play 1500 to 1750. The difference between what you can have in a 2000 point list to a 1500 point list is massive. This is why I think this is why some US players see the list as being really important.

I would also like to add that I'm not saying that UK players are better than US players or visa versa (although in the ETC the US did better than the UK), it's just we play in different enviroments

Player skill and list building are both important parts of a complete breakfast wargaming.

To argue that one is more important than another is like arguing that water is more important to human life than air. Without either, you're a necron player.

I don't know.

I would say that this trend is also extremely prevalent in starcraft 2, where top American and European players tend to focus on meta style game play while Asian players tend to focus on quick, fast, and brutal early game attacks.

leontheconfused wrote:I have been listening to a lot of 40k podcasts recently and have noticed something, why is it folks in the US believe that player skill comes second to building a good army list?

It would seem that UK players believe that a skilled player can take a not very competitive list and do well with it and I am trying to understand the US view point.

2 reasons.

1. In the US most tourney are 1850-2000, this large points value really places an emphasis on optimization. Since if your list is not optimized and your opponents is, you are at a disadvantage.

2. Americans like to win, and win hard. ITs in our nature its part of our culture. If we don't win, we lost.

Red_Lives wrote:2. Americans like to win, and win hard. ITs in our nature its part of our culture. If we don't win, we lost.

This is true as I'm learning from getting into NFL! You can only win or lose no draws!

Gaz Taylor wrote:This is true as I'm learning from getting into NFL! You can only win or lose no draws!

How can there be such a thing as a "draw"? If you draw, you didn't win. If you didn't win, you obviously lost.

(the above should be taken with a grain of salt as it's coming from someone who brought a Swarmlord and Shrikes to an 1850 tourney because he likes the models )

Also there's draws in the NFL :p

I'll just leave this here...

Well I can't make good lists or play with sound tactics. I just plain suck at Warhammer... I've come to terms with it. :(

I do have to agree that even the greatest player can not pull out a win if the army lacks coherency.

oni wrote:Well I can't make good lists or play with sound tactics. I just plain suck at Warhammer... I've come to terms with it. :(

I do have to agree that even the greatest player can not pull out a win if the army lacks coherency.

I've seen a necron list stomp a fairly standard guard list. Running necrons is like running a really bad version of Imperial Guard - every necron unit is surpassed by some unit in the Guard Codex, except the monolith (that's just overcosted and underpowered thanks to the fact that its survivability is highly irrelevant).

Guard player deployed lousy, let destroyers take out chim chims, fired his artillery at fairly irrelevant targets, and ran a squad of vets with melta guns right next to the monolith to melta it out of existence.

List doesn't help when play sucks.

2nd place is the first loser.
Lists and play must go hand in hand. A great player can take a sub-optimal list and pull off a win...unless he's playing another great player who has optimized his list.
Naturally the dice have a say in all of this. If your rolling 1s and 2s all day (except for Ld Checks where your rolling 6s) it hardly matters how killy-great your list is.

Comp: A holdover whose time has come and gone. Your list is either legal per the rules and FOC or it is not. If not...see ya.
Comp docks a list for having a Special Character (on the excuse these ultra-powerful models are not "fluffy")...but in 5th edition it is the Special Characters that create the fluff. It is Lysander that make Yellow UltraMarines become Imperial Fists. It is Vulkan who turns Green UltraMarines into Salamanders.
Wolves and Angels are unique enough to warrant a dedicated Codeci...just as Dark Eldar are to far removed to be lumped into the Eldar world and it took a White Dwarf article to define Ork Cult of Speed (Speed Freaks).
If the codex says I can bring 3 Vindicators (as a fluffy siege breaking army) AND I forgo such things as Speeders and Bikes (ie: I'm playing a stand up and punch list, not a hit and run list) then comp SHOULD recognize that.
It does not because the decision is left to a TO who only see's Vindi-spam but does not note the lack of agile fast units.

I love using what some would classify as sub par lists as it's just more of a challenge, more fun

The meta / list build thing is essentially turning our hobby into magic the gathering. This is a bad thing for players and a good thing for GW as people will buy flavour of the month armies.

People near me seem to be buying and painting an army, playing with it , not winning 'enough' and therefore concluding that their army selection/codex (let alone list, luck, skill or tactics) is 'weak' and so must move onto something bigger and better.

The best thing is to make notes after a game of what did what where and to whom, and gently test out other units in a controlled manner.
Also 25% scenery saturation adds a large variable to the game. Theoryhammer only works when you're 24" away on a flat table.

I generally find that lists matter a *lot* at low levels of play, but as people know more about how to play the game, lists start meaning less. In a tournament setting, lists seem to matter very little, as long as nobody has a truly bad list. Note that, when new armies come out, *everyone* is at a low level of play with those armies, so it's a lot easier for lists to achieve surprise and dominate regardless of skill-- hence "fad lists" such as Nob Bikers and the like.