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http://thebrownpaintbrush.blogspot.com/2011/04/40k-psychological-part.html

I know no one likes links, but it's much easier to copy and paste that. Plus it gets more people to read my blog!

ANyway I want to know what you guys have to say about psychology and 40k, so share and discuss!

Matt Cassidy's from Maine; let him tell you all about how awesome it is some time. He's like a walking Maine tourism board/immigration encouragement service. Alex lives in Connecticut, as do fellow mercs David Strimple and Sean Nayden. Jamie Hatcher and I are in NH. Tom Greene in MA. I'll spare you the roster for the rest of the continental US, and the guys in the UK and France.

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Mental fortitude and the right attitude are key.

That being said, when I was in my prime (at my highest winning percentage) I don't know if I would call my attitude "confident". I always considered every outcome in doubt, which encouraged me to scrape out hard wins or draws in bad situations, and meant I never took my foot off the accelerator when I was winning.

Just have confidence, but don't be a dick, and a lot of opponents get wary. Even if stuff gets out of hand I normally keep a cool head and my opponents will make mistakes.

Psychology is pretty huge in 40k; no matter how good or bad the list, its all in how ya play.

Quite, making your opponent guess which troops are in which vehicles can really mess with people's heads. Also if you're playing against a guard player with all his vehicles destroyed, you can just pop off a few of his guys each turn making him think like he's losing tons of men, He will charge his guys out of his defencsive position fairly quickly if he can't shoot you.

Me and my friends play many games (usually teams) and if we are setting up the terrain it really messes with people to change it round whilst they are out of the room, it works miracles.

I study psychology myself, 40k is a game of heads!

Ipnurt, it sounds like some of your examples have maybe crossed over from "psychology" into what we might call "cheating?" Are you talking about moving terrain during a game?

Something related to the OP I was noticing last night during a game I was losing badly is that it takes a lot of energy to do something tedious and complex, like arrange 28 kroot in a proper bubble-wrap. Playing a game at the end of a work day and feeling like you're losing anyway and nothing you do is going to help, it gets pretty hard to muster up the energy to stay in a game like that.

I've probably helped my opponents defeat me more than a few times.

I thought you were going to shoot the crud out of him in that game. I figured you'd at least take the secondary objective, maybe the tertiary, and get no worse than a Draw on the primary. How'd it come out again?

Yeah, it is as the OP says. The attitude you go into the game with counts massively.

I agree that getting in your opponents head is good stuff and important. Also keeping them out of yours. I generally approach a game w/a almost insanely laid back attitude. I smile a lot and don't get worked up about almost anything and I think that confidence wears on an opponent. No matter how bad it's going in my games I still think I'm gonna win.

I pretty much don't do anything to get into people's heads unless I'm playing Nids and I'm up against IG or SW because if that happens I congratulate them on their impending victory as the internet has informed me I stand no chance

Psycological warfare is certaintly a valuable part of competitive play.

the problem arises when you run into another player who is also trying to use psychological warfare against you. or you both know you are using Psy warfare.


one rule i always follow when playing, and a lovely quote from dear Nappy

"Never interrupt your opponent when he is making a mistake"-Napoleon

this also goes with a saying of my own,

"always assume your opponent is smarter then you"


combined, this means you should also assume your opponet's mistake is actually a cleaver plan to draw you out.

look for possable ways your plan could go wrong and plan accordingly.


and ALWAYS base your own plans on the average result. never rely on the dice going in your favor.

Mannahnin wrote:I thought you were going to shoot the crud out of him in that game. I figured you'd at least take the secondary objective, maybe the tertiary, and get no worse than a Draw on the primary. How'd it come out again?

He was in my head

Actually it was partly that and partly my inexperience with Tau. I stood off too far with my crisis suits--at about 38-40" so not even usually getting a plasma shot--when I could have closed in to 17" for dual plasma shots on my turns without undue risk from his shooting. I moved two crisis suit teams in to contest the objective in the assault move in turn 5 when I really only needed to move one team in, so as a result the librarian was able to catch the commander in assault (he didn't need to be that close) and force-weapon him down. So it was a draw on the primary of claiming the center, draw on the secondary of kill points (because I didn't close in enough to shoot enough to score the points) and he won on the tertiary HQ-kill, since his librarian killed my commander at the bottom of turn 5.

If there had been a turn 6, we agreed I probably would have shot the crud out of him.

But actually I was thinking of the game earlier that night where I was doing dumb things like moving a unit of crisis suits up to take a terminator assault and save a unit of fire warriors in a KP game. That was just pure fatigue with me standing there going, "I really should be doing this the other way around." I can do target selection in my sleep, but still adjusting to the sort of layered-wave screen maneuvering of Tau units.

But it's also true that, deploying longways on a short table edge against a Tau army in hard cover with outflanking kroot mobs trying to claim a center objective at 1000 points, most opponents probably would have given up and not even tried. My opponent's confidence and willingness to try something crazy with his army in the face of a clearly ridiculous matchup made it a really tough game for me, and he deserved the win.

Grey Templar wrote:"Never interrupt your opponent when he is making a mistake"-Napoleon

God I need to stop doing this. I am always reminding players that what they are doing is probably a bad idea and giving take backs. Most folks don't return the favor though and I just end up feeling butt hurt and helping the other guy win. lol

Was really bad at the last local tourney. Gave the Nid player about 4 or 5 assault take backs for him making poor unit decisions and having the units clip cover and strike at Init 1. Not only did it waste a bunch of time explaining, but I would have eaten those units alive.

Ipnurt wrote:Quite, making your opponent guess which troops are in which vehicles can really mess with people's heads. Also if you're playing against a guard player with all his vehicles destroyed, you can just pop off a few of his guys each turn making him think like he's losing tons of men, He will charge his guys out of his defencsive position fairly quickly if he can't shoot you.

Me and my friends play many games (usually teams) and if we are setting up the terrain it really messes with people to change it round whilst they are out of the room, it works miracles.

I study psychology myself, 40k is a game of heads!

I hope this is some kind of joke or troll post, because all of those "techniques" are cheating!

Popping off a couple guardsmen from each squad is just poor target priority, not cheating.

The rest on the other hand...

Psychology definitely has a role. For example, the psychological factor of a unit such as Marbo.

However, I've had a real-life issue with it - playing the now 2nd highest 40k player (according to Rankings HQ) is just a bit jarring. Especially if you haven't even been playing for a year.

Psychology does get to you when your playing high profile players. I made a mistake in my game against Alex Fennel as well not getting out with my Vets and shooting his terminator which had just stunned their chimera so he trashed my chimera and killed them next turn causing the game to be a draw.

Whenever I go to a serious game I make sure to wear dark sunglasses and reek of alcohol so that my opponent underestimates me, and can't read my poker face.

Kirika wrote:Psychology does get to you when your playing high profile players. I made a mistake in my game against Alex Fennel as well not getting out with my Vets and shooting his terminator which had just stunned their chimera so he trashed my chimera and killed them next turn causing the game to be a draw.

Oh physclogy is how I win games!
Love to screw with people mineds! Just love it.
The best way to do it is to be chilled and positive.
When ever my enamies begin to win I begin to smile and whisper to myself. I begin to make jokes out of evrything and seem not to care and laugh. Then the player begins to think I have a plan or a scheme. So they start doing small mistakes which lead to heavy losses.

I remmember when my death guard army was getting raped by Blood Angles. I began to be positive and I would say "hehe come kill some more." I would smile and stare at the board. Then at one point the Blood Angel player start panicking and started to think he is makeing mistakes, in the end of the game he said that he thought that he thought I was useing my units as decoys and that I would send in my plaque ogryns and powerful close combat units in the end at his death companys. So he began to be over protective of his death companys and saunguinor guads and started to spread them out and send them in the middle of no where to wipe out small squds off my guys. He began to be so protective of his units he forgout the real objective of the game. Which was to control the center which I did in the end.

Smile

it confuses people

Getting in peoples heads is half the fun! If you hype up a unit beyond all recognition, they usually panic and try to stay away from it or shoot it with less than ideal units.

Just recently I actually played a game where my main tactic and objective was to talk up everything I did during deployment. My enemy was using a mawloc and I was fielding Grey Knights, I managed to completely indirectly talk him out of using "terror from the deep" just because of what I said.

I then super hyped my paladins so he shot them with termagants. I had already done the math, and it would take those gaunts something like 400 shots to actually kill the squad, so I already knew I was in the clear. I didnt take any wounds what so ever. He even went so far as to hide his hive tyrant until turn 4, which was a huge mistake on his part. I think I may have gone a little too far there, I mean I didnt talk my units up that much, but I got him playing so defensively that his whole battleplan was crushed from the start. Suppose he was just weak minded.

But I have noticed when observing other players that it becomes obvious when they know they are losing and they are trying to hide it. They start claiming every infantry kill against you as a huge victory, taunting you and your units abilities. If you manage to keep a cool head and smile back at them, they get so flustered they start forgetting stuff.

I learned in the last tournament that playing against people who don't know the rules is crushing for my morale. If I debate than the already limited time is going to be cut short, but if I don't they will gain a advantage. It really sucks because it cost me a game last time.

If they are making a genuine tactical mistake I let them make it. However if they are making the mistake based on incorrect information than I will let them know either with words or with the expression on my face followed by a "Okaaayyyy........"

Anyone ever watch Death Note? That's exactly what I'm imagining with this thread. 2 hyper-intellectual sociopaths playing mind games with each other.

terranarc wrote:Anyone ever watch Death Note? That's exactly what I'm imagining with this thread. 2 hyper-intellectual sociopaths playing mind games with each other.

I can see that, totally. Except they probably won't be that skinny....

Leth wrote:I learned in the last tournament that playing against people who don't know the rules is crushing for my morale. If I debate than the already limited time is going to be cut short, but if I don't they will gain a advantage. It really sucks because it cost me a game last time.

If they are making a genuine tactical mistake I let them make it. However if they are making the mistake based on incorrect information than I will let them know either with words or with the expression on my face followed by a "Okaaayyyy........"

You mean fire warriors charging a Deamon Prince?

Psycoligy is great. Alot of people have given up hope at the start of the game because of how many models I use. Fully painted armies also seem to be more intimidating than ithers aswell (I guess it just looks more proffesional)

I've played competitive Magic: the Gathering before and Top 8'ed a few tournaments. Some of m matches were won based solely on psyching my opponent out: bluffing, making him/her underestimate you, making him/her overestimate you and such. I find it easier to psych opponents out in that game because there are a lot of hidden information that most of the time your opponent has no access to, unlike in 40k where your list should be known by your opponent and every move made is plain for everyone to see. Perhaps I am still inexperienced with playing 40k, but I find it very difficult to psych my opponent out without being an ass (which of course is not optimal for both sides).

Which leads to my question: how do you get into your opponent's head without hidden information?

My last game vs a Blood Angels army (optimized for 3rd edition, though) was practically a rout (sp?). And get this, I probably would have lost, if not for a psychological advantage. He had Melta in his fast-moving Assault squads, and a couple tac squads sitting in the backfield with Heavy Bolters, as well as 2 Dredds, one with Blood Talons. I was playing Orks. But, my orks are a rather strange bunch, heavily mechanized, low infantry. I had 2 Kans, 2 Dredds and a Battlewagon. My opponent came right out in the beginning and said "Oh no, I don't have enough anti-armour to deal with that!" and proceeded to allow my walkers to get into close combat with one after another of his Assault squads.

Mind you, this was an objective game, and I only had one mob of 20 shoota boyz and a couple small Nob squads that were scoring. He had about 10 scoring squads, including Jump infantry, but he played at points too defensively (holding at least half his squads back in his own deployment zone) or too recklessly (assaulting his marines into CC with my Walkers), when he could have probably ignored my Kanz, melta'd my Dredds to death, and Jumped onto at least two of the objectives- not to mention how he could easily have gotten back armour on my Battlewagon with his Melta-pistol Assault squad, but instead focused on the Dredd.

That's why I always run at least one, often two DeffDredds in my lists- the sheer psychological "Shoot this!" factor of them is great for dividing or pulling enemy fire.