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So, about a year ago, I threw up a post on dakka that wound up being coalesced into this article. The abstract of this article (for TLDR types), is that what player skill in 40k is is the ability to play exactly the odds that you want. You bring meltaguns in your list because you want to increase the odds of you being able to kill a land raider from 0% up to something, for example. Likewise, the whole point of moving is to get exactly the weapons in to exactly the right ranges at exactly the right targets. The article then goes on to note that because the increase in player skill becomes more difficult the more skilled you get (it's tougher to play a 93.555% than a 90%), and the more your player skill increases, the less it matters (because playing odds from 50% to 90% is much bigger of a deal than playing from 50% to 50.00000001%), therefore, the better you get, the less player skill matters, especially when you consider that it's relative to your opponent's skill. Eventually, as these controlled variables become more, well, controlled, the uncontrollable variables in the game (like the random results of die rolls) matter relatively more. TLDR - the better you and everyone else gets, the more the results of the game are determined by die rolls.

But this post isn't just to rehash this theory. The reason that this is part 2 is because of a conversation I just had with another knowledgeable 40k player. The purpose of this is to get more into detail about what, in fact, skill actually does in a game of 40k.

To begin with, let's assume, for the sake of the platonic, that in any given situation, there are perfect odds to play. For example, let's say that it's the bottom of turn 7, and your opponent has tank shocked a land raider onto your objective. If you kill the raider, you take back the objective and win the game, if you don't you lose, or draw (depending). In this case, the land raider really, really, really needs to be dead. You should play the odds as short as you possibly can to make sure that raider dies. For another example, let's say that it's the bottom of 7, and there's a unit that has no killing power left (say, an immobilized, weaponless dread), and is nowhere near an objective. You can play the odds here as long as you want, because it doesn't matter, because if you fail, your failure won't have any impact on the game. Of course, most odds fall somewhere in the middle, where some things need to be killed more than others in kind of a big gradient.

Now, whatever those odds are in any given situation, let's say that there is a certain odds that are perfect, and that any player should play. If you play the odds too long, choosing to not apply enough killing power so that you can focus on other stuff, you are going to be too likely to fail, and you should have focused on that unit more (oh, I thought those two meltaguns would be enough. Hmm...). If you play the odds too short, you have the opportunity costs of overkill (yes, that rhino is certainly dead, but you moved all your meltaguns over to shoot it, now say hello to my blood talon dreadnought over here...)

So, the question then becomes, what sets the "right" odds you should play for any given circumstance? The answer, of course, is your opponent. Your opponent moved things the turn before, and so changed what needs to be attacked at what level of priority in your turn. If player skill is the ability to play exactly the odds you want, then player skill vis. a vis. your opponent is to give your opponent odds that he will have difficulty playing.

For example, lets say that in your movement phase you move something to make it a bigger threat, and move something else to make it a lesser threat. In this case, you've given your opponent new odds he needs to play (in order to play the platonically "correct" odds). If your opponent has less skill than you, you will be forcing him to play more of the "wrong" odds than he does of you. For example, you may make things slightly more of a threat, and your player's opponent skill might miscalculate the odds as being a much bigger threat (and thus play too short against it), or may fail to perceive that something became more threatening (and thus ignore it, or keep the same amount of focus on it despite it becoming more dangerous).

Of course, this runs into the problem expressed in part 1. The better you get, the more you're going to be playing for thinner and thinner margins, and it won't actually matter as much. Tricking your opponent into caring only 50% about something when he SHOULD have cared 50.00001% about something is scarcely a difference. It's scarcely a difference, of course, compared to the dice. The problem here is that we're talking about 6-sided dice which is a very coarse random mechanic. Tiny changes in the odds out to many decimal places hardly matter when your unit has a 2/3rd chance of hitting and a 1/3rd chance of doing absolutely nothing. Likewise, there is a great deal of coarseness built into the game itself. If you have 5 meltaguns, you can't fire 3.45 of them at one target and 2.55 of them at another. You have a coarse, discreet set to deal with. Like part 1 notes, as player skill improves, it breaks past this threshold where the deviation becomes more important than the average. If the slightly smarter odds is to play assuming there's a turn 6 and there isn't because you rolled in the bottom 33% of possible outcomes, well that's just that. The game is done, and the "correct" play saw you lose the game. Perhaps these changes will allow you to win more in the very long term, but the smaller the differences, the longer this term becomes (especially compared to, say, a tournament in which you only play a small handful of games).

But there's another way to look at this relative skill gap. One way is to get your opponent to play the odds sufficiently fine when he otherwise has the ability to play them, but another way is to prevent your opponent by playing the right odds by making him less capable of doing so. For example, if I have a bunch of tanks, and I kill off all my opponent's anti-tank, then he is extremely reduced in his ability to play certain odds. If I destroy my opponent's ability to hurt a land raider, and I tank shock his objective turn 7, my opponent literally cannot play the odds required to win. No matter how skilled he is in the movement phase, he can't use dead units.

More importantly, this explains why 40k is so dependent on list building. The tools that you bring determine the kinds of odds you can play. Be deficient in something, and your opponent can always set odds that you will have a very difficult time using player skill to match, if you're even able to at all. This also does a good job explaining why spam lists have become so popular. In the case of a foot horde, you may well bring more models than they brought bullets. No amount of movement is going to help if they don't have the tools at their disposal to be able to play the odds that you've set impossibly high for them with your spam list.

So what skill boils down to, then, is bringing the right list and moving things in such a way where you exactly play the correct odds that your opponent has set for you, and to do it in such a way where you set the odds that are the most difficult for your opponent to play against. Think of it a little bit like tennis. The point is to get to wherever your opponent hit the ball to, and then to hit it back to the place your opponent is least able to get to in return.

The real problem here, though, is that 40k isn't tennis. Tennis works by your skill in running, and your skill in hitting the ball where you want it to go. 40k works by your ability to play and set odds, but it's still setting odds. Just because you played and set the odds of something as exactingly as you possibly can in no way guarantees that you're going to be successful. Only the dice determine that. You can never know if you played the odds wrong and got your just deserts when you failed, or if you played the right odds and the dice failed you (and perhaps if you'd just brought that one extra meltagun, you would have actually been playing worse odds (too conservatively)). Likewise, as mentioned before, making an improvement that's 1/100th of something better will only win you 1 extra game for every 100 you play, and the tiny margins are utterly lost on any particular game because of the coarseness of the system itself.

And this, of course, brings us to the tennis analogy again. If you are 1/100th better than your otherwise exactly equal opponent, then you will volley back and forth 100 times before the better player finally wins, while if you are twice as good, you probably only need to hit it back once or twice for you to win. But the transmission system for skill in 40k is very different than this. Because skill only competes against skill through the medium of luck, it is the luck that is important once you reach the coarseness of the system. In a game of tennis where player skill was filtered through who won a coin toss, instead of playing a game where each game took 100 volleys, but the better person one every game, instead you have a game where each player wins half of the games, with a slight bias towards the person with the relatively higher player skill (which, I should mention once again, decreases as the players get absolutely better). In this case, rather than it being 100-0, it would be 51-49.

And so the competition in 40k is really trying to shake the other person into playing the wrong odds, but, of course, you can never have retroactive confirmation of if they played the right odds or not, because it's not the mere playing of the odds that determines the outcome, but rather the outcome of the die itself. You can never know if your opponent brought one too few meltaguns than they should have if one of the meltaguns blows up your tank anyways. The problem, then is that player skill is actually hidden from sight of human eyes behind a veil of randomness that we have difficulty understanding. It makes it easy to fail to see how lucky someone was, and then make a statement about their player skill based on if they were successful, when the determiner of success was, in fact, dice. In fact, it's possible to come to completely wrong conclusions. You see someone fail to kill a tank and you come to the conclusion that they weren't playing conservatively enough, when it was possible that they were playing TOO conservative, but it just so happened that their dice failed them imperceptibly more than they should have.

So, if player skill is playing odds, and the odds obscure the player skill, then the only way that you can see player skill is over a large sample size. The better you and your opponent get, and the smaller and more refined of odds you play, the larger and larger the data set has to get for you to be able to see the impact. Between two very good players that are able to play odds down to the 10,000ths, you may well need to have them play 10,000 games to see who is the better player. Of course, because this is also relative skill, in this case you would need to play 100,000,000 games to actually see the difference because you're really trying to see where one player played the 10,000ths and the other player only managed a 9,999.

As such, the point at which player skill fades into the sample size is shockingly quickly. For example, if you play three games against someone, they could easily be three times worse than you and still pull out an overall draw. Things are just too coarse, both in data creation (6-sided random events) and in measurement (inability to capture fine changes without lots of data points) to be able to measure the difference in player skill.

I think this also gives a way of thinking about baseline competency in 40k. Once you are able to play the odds to within the coarseness of the system itself, then increases in player skill absolutely pass into the realm of luck (and relative difference in player skill long before then), which would count as mastery in my book. In any case, any effect your improvement you make in your skill becomes increasingly tiny as the improvements themselves become absolutely and relatively tinier. Perhaps that's the point at which you stop caring and just start playing 40k as the dice game that it really is, as any difference in player skill may show up only once a year, or once every decade, or, practically speaking, once every never.

@ Ailaros

My opinion on this is:

1. The first decisive thing is the matchup.

If I dont have efficient tools to deal with the enemy army and he has a big variety of tools to deal with my army, I am most likely going to lose regardless of playing skill and dice rolls.

2. The second one is skill.

If the matchup is fairly equal and if I am more skilled than my opponent, then I can take care of much bad luck with careful play

3. The third one is dice

If I am equally skilled and evenly matched and the dice are somehow absurdly imbalanced, I am most likely to lose.



-Matchup is to some extent up to you and your skill with your list. If you have tools for everything you are most likely to be at least evenly matched to your opponent. But of course it can still happen that you face a better list against yours (that doesnt necessarily mean it is better in general).

But skill is more important than luck here. You need the tools to win the game at least. That requires skill in listbuilding. The tools to defeat the opposing list however are defined by the opposing list, which is a mixture of knowledge what to expect and the list the opponent actually brings, which can be totally different and out of your full control. This would be the luck part.

-Playing skill is a mixture of time management, knowledge of force balance, knowledge about the mission, ability to use terrain, knowledge about the capability of your army and the opposing one and the result of those factors is your "matchplan" which is either better or worse than your opponents.

Luck factor here is your opponents playing skill. This is what you cannot control. You could face a better opponent or a worse one.

-Dice are the least decisive factor for a 40k game.

The probability that dice are imbalanced is quite low. It happens, yes, thats because dice are to some extent and under certain circumstances decisive, but most of the time (thats my experience with players) we remember bad dice and tend to forget good dice. So our point of view is inaccurate most of the time.

Even with dice we have a skill and a luck part.

Skill is knowledge about the likelyness of certain dice results and the ability to make use of that. Luck is the deviation from this expectations.


Conclusion:

On the skill part we have:

1. Quality of your army in general
2. Your abilities on the battlefield
3. Your knowledge about how dice rolls work (which is part of 2. actually)

On the luck part we have:

1. Quality of the opposing army
2. skill of your opponent
3. the actual outcome of dice rolls (beyond your expectations <- important!)

My opinion is: Yes, luck is a decisive factor. But dice rolls are not particularly important.

But the more you increase your skill the less you are dependent on good luck to win and the less bad luck throws you out of the game.
Yes the skill-curve flattens at the top because even though 40k is quite complex, there are limits. But that doesnt mean that luck factor increases. It only decreases less fast.

-Nazdreg- wrote:
Conclusion:

On the skill part we have:

1. Quality of your army in general
2. Your abilities on the battlefield
3. Your knowledge about how dice rolls work (which is part of 2. actually)

On the luck part we have:

1. Quality of the opposing army
2. skill of your opponent
3. the actual outcome of dice rolls (beyond your expectations <- important!)

My opinion is: Yes, luck is a decisive factor. But dice rolls are not particularly important.

But the more you increase your skill the less you are dependent on good luck to win and the less bad luck throws you out of the game.
Yes the skill-curve flattens at the top because even though 40k is quite complex, there are limits. But that doesnt mean that luck factor increases.

This pretty much sums up mine opinion as well.

-Nazdreg- wrote:The probability that dice are imbalanced is quite low. It happens, yes, thats because dice are to some extent and under certain circumstances decisive, but most of the time (thats my experience with players) we remember bad dice and tend to forget good dice. So our point of view is inaccurate most of the time. Skill is knowledge about the likelyness of certain dice results and the ability to make use of that. Luck is the deviation from this expectations.

The point here is that the better you get, the more exactingly you play the odds, but at some point you get to a place where you are able to make decisions that are of finer resolution than the deviation of the particular odds itself. This reflects a common complaint some people have about mathhammer. Just because you know you have a 60% chance to blow up a land raider, doesn't mean that you actually blow up the land raider. Over a very long term against an infinite number of land raiders in these same circumstances you will blow up more than you don't, but you can't predict the individual die roll, and it's the individual die roll that actually determines whether you blew it up or not.

Player skill does not determine the outcome of any given event. The dice do.

-Nazdreg- wrote:Yes, luck is a decisive factor. But dice rolls are not particularly important.

Which brings me to this. How can you say that this is true? Either you killed that unit before it got into assault, or you didn't. Either you killed that unit that was coming over to contest an objective or you didn't. Either you won close combat, or you lost and got caught in a sweeping advance. The results of these events are extremely important. The results are determined by dice. Therefore the dice are extremely important.

The dice (and therefore luck) is the transmission system of 40k, because only luck actually determines the outcome of events. Therefore player skill is an extension.. Were of luck (namely, your ability to manipulate it). Was this chess, where player skill had a direct and proprietary effect on events, then the only thing that would matter would be player skill, as that skill determines 100% if you took his rook or not. 40k isn't like that, though. You can move the right pieces into the right places, but that doesn't kill the land raider. Only the dice do that.

-Nazdreg- wrote:But the more you increase your skill the less you are dependent on good luck to win and the less bad luck throws you out of the game.

So if, as we both seem to agree, that "skill is knowledge about the likelyness of certain dice results and the ability to make use of that", what does this quote actually mean? How does an increase in the knowledge of the odds make the game less dependent on the actual outcome of those dice?

Certainly having more skill allows you to keep playing the odds you want to play even after calamity, at least, moreso than a worse player. It doesn't make the outcome of any given event any less dependent on the actual result of die rolls.

To a certain extent I agree with this. In theory two completely flawless opponents will never make a mistake and the outcome will be completely determined by the dice.

In actuality even the best players still make small mistakes on occasion. These small mistakes become much more important at higher levels of play. A really good opponent will be able to take a small mistake and exploit it potentially opening up other opportunities to exploit.

I'm learning hedging in finance atm, and it's very similar. You try to lock in a profit by hedging the odds (in international finance, it's the exchange rate), usually with a forwards, options, or futures contract, but there is no gurantee you make money.

However, hedging is good because if you make a tree of the possible outcomes, you come out ahead.

It's gotten so complex in finance, that decision trees are used to come up with option prices (and decision trees are very complicated), because any slight deviation in price could lead to arbitrage (or riskless profit, which traders are aware of now)

I would argue that 40k has not gotten to the place where people are making the best decisions mathematically. The vast majority of mathhammer decisions are based on simplicity and incorrect calculations. We dont' factor volatility (standard deviation), we don't factor multiple decision trees, we don't factor range.

Of course, any game reaches what I call a breakdown point. Eventually you break the game down into its components, and you can calculate out who will win on turn 1 without actually having to play (i.e., the decision tree from start to finish is complete). We've only partially gotten to that point imo. Your mileage may vary.

Edit: Just to clarify, forwards, options, and futures are a zero sum game. If the buyer of a contract makes a profit, the seller of the contract has the equivalent loss. Of course, the number in finance is dynamic (as opposed to 40k where it's static and always a variation of d6)

ThatEdGuy wrote: These small mistakes become much more important at higher levels of play.

Why?

ThatEdGuy wrote: A really good opponent will be able to take a small mistake and exploit it potentially opening up other opportunities to exploit.

In a game without specific events being controlled by dice, this would be true, but in 40k?

The thing is, the odds you play in any given situation doesn't actually determine the results of what actually happens. It's very possible to destroy a land raider using one too few meltaguns, and it's very possible to not kill a land raider despite taking one too many.

The only thing that your opponent can exploit is the results of what happened before their next decision. Given that the results aren't determined by skill, your opponent can't exploit mistakes - they can only exploit your luck.

scuddman wrote:However, hedging is good because if you make a tree of the possible outcomes, you come out ahead.

Right. It's also what makes a good backgammon or blackjack player. The foolish investor invests based on what they think the security will do in the next 30 minutes. The wise plays the long game with their odds.

scuddman wrote:I would argue that 40k has not gotten to the place where people are making the best decisions mathematically. The vast majority of mathhammer decisions are based on simplicity and incorrect calculations. We dont' factor volatility (standard deviation), we don't factor multiple decision trees, we don't factor range.

Of course, any game reaches what I call a breakdown point.

Right. The problem with 40k, though, is that that breakdown point is much higher than in finance. In finance, you have billions if not trillions of tiny factors that all influence the price of something. In 40k, you roll a six-sided die.

Also, I'd note that finance isn't, strictly speaking, random. It has the appearance of random given our inability to understand it. Slight difference, I know...

-Nazdreg- wrote:@ Ailaros

My opinion on this is:

1. The first decisive thing is the matchup.

If I dont have efficient tools to deal with the enemy army and he has a big variety of tools to deal with my army, I am most likely going to lose regardless of playing skill and dice rolls.

2. The second one is skill.

If the matchup is fairly equal and if I am more skilled than my opponent, then I can take care of much bad luck with careful play

3. The third one is dice

If I am equally skilled and evenly matched and the dice are somehow absurdly imbalanced, I am most likely to lose.



-Matchup is to some extent up to you and your skill with your list. If you have tools for everything you are most likely to be at least evenly matched to your opponent. But of course it can still happen that you face a better list against yours (that doesnt necessarily mean it is better in general).

But skill is more important than luck here. You need the tools to win the game at least. That requires skill in listbuilding. The tools to defeat the opposing list however are defined by the opposing list, which is a mixture of knowledge what to expect and the list the opponent actually brings, which can be totally different and out of your full control. This would be the luck part.

-Playing skill is a mixture of time management, knowledge of force balance, knowledge about the mission, ability to use terrain, knowledge about the capability of your army and the opposing one and the result of those factors is your "matchplan" which is either better or worse than your opponents.

Luck factor here is your opponents playing skill. This is what you cannot control. You could face a better opponent or a worse one.

-Dice are the least decisive factor for a 40k game.

The probability that dice are imbalanced is quite low. It happens, yes, thats because dice are to some extent and under certain circumstances decisive, but most of the time (thats my experience with players) we remember bad dice and tend to forget good dice. So our point of view is inaccurate most of the time.

Even with dice we have a skill and a luck part.

Skill is knowledge about the likelyness of certain dice results and the ability to make use of that. Luck is the deviation from this expectations.


Conclusion:

On the skill part we have:

1. Quality of your army in general
2. Your abilities on the battlefield
3. Your knowledge about how dice rolls work (which is part of 2. actually)

On the luck part we have:

1. Quality of the opposing army
2. skill of your opponent
3. the actual outcome of dice rolls (beyond your expectations <- important!)

My opinion is: Yes, luck is a decisive factor. But dice rolls are not particularly important.

But the more you increase your skill the less you are dependent on good luck to win and the less bad luck throws you out of the game.
Yes the skill-curve flattens at the top because even though 40k is quite complex, there are limits. But that doesnt mean that luck factor increases. It only decreases less fast.

While I agree to a great extent, some armies bad luck can be pretty much an instant loss. I cannot tell you how many times with my Daemons or Dark Eldar bad dice have nearly lost or have lost the game for me. Other armies are far more forgiving for bad luck, regardless of skill.

Zid wrote:While I agree to a great extent, some armies bad luck can be pretty much an instant loss. I cannot tell you how many times with my Daemons or Dark Eldar bad dice have nearly lost or have lost the game for me. Other armies are far more forgiving for bad luck, regardless of skill.

I'd certainly agree that some armies are better at allowing you to play the odds you want to over time. In a guard army, if you blew something up, well whatever, I can still move things to get the odds I want because that one chimera had 6 others next to it.

Compare that to more "brittle" armies that can't take redundancy and rely more on synergy and you can see this problem quickly, If I'm a marine player and you blow up a couple of my razorbacks, I still have a lot of razorbacks and meltaguns. If I'm an eldar player and you blow up my two units of dragons, well, there went all my anti-tank, GG. As mentioned in the OP, you can't use player skill on dead units, so in armies where casualties matter a lot more (without the ability to do other things around them), then you'd have an army that doesn't allow you to use your player skill as much as others.

Perhaps that's why imperium armies are much more popular. They tend to be more versatile, and are thus less "brittle", allowing for more, and more consistent application of player skill over time.

There should be a hard distinction between skillful play and skillful list building. With the internet anyone can get an optimized list. With all the information available to anyone who wants to find it you really have to be willfully stubborn to field a 'bad' list.

Most games don't even see the option to be a skillful player. Most decisions in my experience are made for you and most players will make the same decision. You don't shoot krak missiles at grots you shoot at trukks or kans. You don't choose to shoot with pistols and then not assault with your BA assault squad. You don't break cover with your kommandos when there's no assault to get into and you'll just be standing in the open for a turn getting shot.

These aren't skillful decisions. These aren't the difference between a top tier player and any gump in a flgs. They are so obvious and universal that they might as well not be choices, they have nothing to do with a person being exceptional at the game. They have everything to do with luck. Did you penetrate the vehicle? Did you wound the close combatant? Did you move far enough through cover? These answers decide way way way way more games than the obscure plays only an informed and practiced player employs.

This gels with what ailaros is talking about. Let's say some guardsmen are in cover and some space marines are going to assault them next turn. Let's also say staying in cover and shooting then striking first when they're assaulted is the right play while breaking cover to assault first is the wrong play, that is to say they'll do 2 wounds to the space marines the wrong way and 2 wounds with a 16% chance of a 3rd wound the right way. In both cases the assault will finish on the gaurd's next assault phase, there's nothing relating to keeping the space marines tied up or the game ending with one side ahead or anything but that 16% chance of causing an extra wound. So 84% of the time there is no difference between making the right play and the wrong play. And any time the dice don't fall at exact averages but skew, the assaulting guardsmen do 4 wounds or the defending guardsmen get swept, it's just glossed over as one action among hundreds during a game. Even in a battle report you don't see anyone go back and do the math to see oh I really shouldn't have charged there, you just see him say he miraculously beat space marines in cc and it seems like the championing moment he started to turn the game around even though it was a poor play because it's winning him the game. He would need to get in that exact situation over and over and over to learn the right play. It's more likely to change editions than for a person to find themselves in a situation enough times where they can improve their own player skill. Hence, the better the players, the more they know exactly what the right play is in every obscure situation, the more the dice matter and the harder it is to see the even more tiny advantages they could still be missing if they exist at all.

The belief wargamers have in luck and superscription surrounding their dice is a lot like small children clinging to a teddy bear for protection, it gives a false sense of security and protection that feels good, but is ultimately useless form of protection. Luck has ocean like qualities. It ebbs and flows on it's own time, and is beyond our individual ability to control. Precious energy can be wasted fighting a riptide, or one can just go with the flow. Despite it's ebbs and flows the average stays very constant, the total size of the ocean stays the same despite the fact it appears to come and go in large quantities. At the end of the day the average dice roll is going to be about 3.5, but luck isn't the average of the dice it's making the really important rolls when it really matters. If anything the dice add more of a need for skill into the game, not less. 2 important skills are added through the dice; the ability to capitalize on a few lucky rolls, and the ability to mitigate the damage from unlucky setbacks. The inability to recover from bad luck usually means it's either a flaw in the battle plans, or an equally skilled opponent was able to capitalize on his good luck.

What it comes down to with the odds is knowing which moves to make based on strong favorable odds (charging a stationary vehicle with 5 scarabs is virtually guaranteed to wreck it), versus needing to run with worse odds when your preferred options aren't available. And then knowing that some things have bad odds even in the best circumstances. Even a meltagun at 6" only has about a 1/6 chance of wrecking a Land Raider, and those are closest to the best odds you'll get.

Having a solid strategy that maximizes the conservative moves you can make (where the dice are really unlikely to totally screw you) and forces the opponent to make moves that are repeatedly more aggressive is the key to good generalship. Even moves with a 2/3 chance of success are virtually guaranteed to fail if you have to do 5 in a row.

This is true, 40k has an easier to reach breakdown point where skill no longer matters compared to finance.

Why? Eventually if you break down every move in a decision tree, you know the outcome of the game without playing it. All that's left is the odds.
So...you show up to FLGS, break out dice, roll off, and then shake hands

I believe we haven't gotten to that point yet...but who knows? As this edition closes out, I'd say we played it out pretty thoroughly. How much is left? I don't know, but I will agree we're closer to breakdown than not. I do, though, think we haven't reached breakdown.

Actinium wrote:There should be a hard distinction between skillful play and skillful list building. With the internet anyone can get an optimized list. With all the information available to anyone who wants to find it you really have to be willfully stubborn to field a 'bad' list.

Most games don't even see the option to be a skillful player. Most decisions in my experience are made for you and most players will make the same decision. You don't shoot krak missiles at grots you shoot at trukks or kans. You don't choose to shoot with pistols and then not assault with your BA assault squad. You don't break cover with your kommandos when there's no assault to get into and you'll just be standing in the open for a turn getting shot.

These aren't skillful decisions. These aren't the difference between a top tier player and any gump in a flgs. They are so obvious and universal that they might as well not be choices, they have nothing to do with a person being exceptional at the game. They have everything to do with luck. Did you penetrate the vehicle? Did you wound the close combatant? Did you move far enough through cover? These answers decide way way way way more games than the obscure plays only an informed and practiced player employs.

While I see your point, I'd argue that list-building and 'obvious' choices ARE skilful decisions, and can be counted as part of the skill of the player. It is certainly possible to not have these skills (when you first start playing, for example), and the fact that you learn these skills from other people (netlists etc) does not make them any less a part of your effectiveness as a player.

I agree with you, though, that these are 'basics'. Taking a popular, good net list is a basic skill it doesn't take long to learn. However, as your skill increases you may find ways to make amazing lists that aren't netlists through your knowledge of how the game works.

TLDR, list-building is a skill for the purposes of this thread, but given the amount of advice available, it's an incredibly easy one to acquire

-Nazdreg- wrote:@ Ailaros

My opinion on this is:

1. The first decisive thing is the matchup.

If I dont have efficient tools to deal with the enemy army and he has a big variety of tools to deal with my army, I am most likely going to lose regardless of playing skill and dice rolls.

2. The second one is skill.

If the matchup is fairly equal and if I am more skilled than my opponent, then I can take care of much bad luck with careful play

3. The third one is dice

If I am equally skilled and evenly matched and the dice are somehow absurdly imbalanced, I am most likely to lose.

While I agree that matchup and experience about the possibilities you might encounter are part of skill, I can't see your logic in declaring dice rolls unimportant. Assuming your 1&2, as well as 'list building' are all grouped together as 'skill at 40k', then as long as the relative skill levels of you and your opponent are very different, your order stands. If they are similar, dice become more important.

In a game between one player who is good at list-building (or searching the web) and one who is not good at list-building (or searching the web), then the person who is better is more likely to win the game, regardless of dice rolls. However, since list-building (through searching the web) is a very easy skill to acquire, it is likely that both players already possess it to similar levels, and thus the effect it has on any likely game could easily be marginalised.

Actinium wrote:These aren't skillful decisions. These aren't the difference between a top tier player and any gump in a flgs. They are so obvious and universal that they might as well not be choices

Well, it is skill though. New players aren't necessarily going to know not to shoot krak missiles at grots. The thing is, though, once you get basic competency in the game, things level off in a big hurry, like you note.

schadenfreude wrote:2 important skills are added through the dice; the ability to capitalize on a few lucky rolls, and the ability to mitigate the damage from unlucky setbacks.

Right, this basically IS what player skill is. Setting odds and then setting new odds when the situation changes (as the result of other die rolls). Skill in 40k is how you manipulate the result of dice, so you can roll more dice more exactly how you want to roll them.

Emperor awfulness wrote:Having a solid strategy that maximizes the conservative moves you can make (where the dice are really unlikely to totally screw you) and forces the opponent to make moves that are repeatedly more aggressive is the key to good generalship.

I don't quite agree with this. Being more conservative isn't necessarily better, nor is being more aggressive worse. Both have costs when you play the odds wrong.

In this case, the better player knows when to take riskier risks, and when to take safer risks, rather than knowing how to always take the safest risks possible.

scuddman wrote:I believe we haven't gotten to that point yet...but who knows? As this edition closes out, I'd say we played it out pretty thoroughly. How much is left? I don't know, but I will agree we're closer to breakdown than not. I do, though, think we haven't reached breakdown.

Well, right, and I'm not trying to say that there is a THE level here. I don't think any 40k player can always every time know exactly the odds.

The point is more a matter of resolution. What does it gain you to know odds out to many decimal places when the coarseness of the resolution of odds generation is only 1 in 6? Once you break through the limits of the game itself (which is rather easy), then said gains lose utility to the mechanics of the game itself, and any benefit will be very, very difficult to see, at least over the course of a single game or two.

There are area unexplored, though. I almost never see scout bikes taken. I see Tau and IG players using leadership manipulation to control assaults, but I don't see many chaos/space marine players do it nearly as well. Very little has been written about range and range manipulation in a game where you aren't allowed to premeasure. Failing an assault because you were out of range happens, and I believe it's mostly completely preventable.

Also, some manuvers don't show up on the stat sheet. Tanks block line of sight and take up space. You can use vehicles to shut out assault. You can use vehicles to tank shock units out of cover (even if they pass their leadership test). None of these require dice.

Very little is written about denial strategies. Some players do it well, but most don't. Or rotations, which is a variation of a denial strategy.
Most of these strategies involve some sort of setup that denies true line of sight or range.

There's still stuff out there.

you cant teach an old dog new tricks i guess. just seems like to many people are too arrogant and ignorant to come to the understanding that they base "play" on a common misconception that the game is not. you guys can make it sound as complicated and as smart as you want, but it comes down one thing in this game and that is what you roll.
you might have the skill to manuever a melta gun within range of your target, but what happens when you miss? that means you are not a very skilled player? no you got unlucky.

the only thing you can control is the ability to allow the odds to be somewhat in your favor. by this i mean listbuilding, do you have the options available to take out your enemy? that is the "skill" you all speak of, learnt over time or from the web. choosing certain armies to play as, by doing this you can take certain models that allow you to have better odds of what you need to roll....but you still need to roll it. and then movement that allows you to have the best "chances" of success. i see that some say list building to what your opponent has.....when you are going to a tournament, you dont know what your opponent is going to have and you have pre determined lists, you dont get to change your models based on your opponents at the start of your game. so yu bring all the melta guns in the world and you face absolutely no armor. its all random, you dont know what you are going to get

the problem i see so many times on this site is the lack of innovative thinking and its happening again! this unit will kill this unit cuz it has this gun and this range and my enemy will be this unit every time and there are no other variable factors. no, that is not how it works, this game is based on chances and odds of what you need to be successfull, most every unit CAN kill most every unit, some just make it easier to accomplish, but you still need luck and chance to accomplish it. just like in mout, you can what if all day on every situation but it always comes down to one principal, the basics. the best player in the world can still lose to the worst, this game is no different in aspects as it is to sports and other competitive games. everything is random there is no pre determined result certain things can make it easier to accomplish, but you still have to accomplish them which this game does by the roll of a die.

lordsolarkodiak wrote:you cant teach an old dog new tricks i guess. just seems like to many people are too arrogant and ignorant to come to the understanding that they base "play" on a common misconception that the game is not. you guys can make it sound as complicated and as smart as you want, but it comes down one thing in this game and that is what you roll.
you might have the skill to manuever a melta gun within range of your target, but what happens when you miss? that means you are not a very skilled player? no you got unlucky.

You make sure there's 8 other melta guns and some lascannons incase that one meltagun misses. Relying on a single shot for anything is very unreliable.

lordsolarkodiak wrote: the only thing you can control is the ability to allow the odds to be somewhat in your favor. by this i mean listbuilding, do you have the options available to take out your enemy? that is the "skill" you all speak of, learnt over time or from the web. choosing certain armies to play as, by doing this you can take certain models that allow you to have better odds of what you need to roll....but you still need to roll it. and then movement that allows you to have the best "chances" of success. i see that some say list building to what your opponent has.....when you are going to a tournament, you dont know what your opponent is going to have and you have pre determined lists, you dont get to change your models based on your opponents at the start of your game. so yu bring all the melta guns in the world and you face absolutely no armor. its all random, you dont know what you are going to get

First, a massively common observance on Dakka is that, even with the best list, you need to know what you're doing to win. A complete newbie can have the best list in the world, but still lose. This implies that listbuilding cannot be the ONLY skill in 40k.

Second, as pointed out earlier, listbuilding is a ridiculously easy skill to aquire - because of the internet. Because of this, we can safely assume that anyone in the top half of any tournament already has this skill. By the theories above, this means that the quality of the list ceases to be important any more (since both players almost certainly have 'good' lists).

Joey wrote:

lordsolarkodiak wrote:you cant teach an old dog new tricks i guess. just seems like to many people are too arrogant and ignorant to come to the understanding that they base "play" on a common misconception that the game is not. you guys can make it sound as complicated and as smart as you want, but it comes down one thing in this game and that is what you roll.
you might have the skill to manuever a melta gun within range of your target, but what happens when you miss? that means you are not a very skilled player? no you got unlucky.

You make sure there's 8 other melta guns and some lascannons incase that one meltagun misses. Relying on a single shot for anything is very unreliable.

yes thats the idea, you move all of that firepower over to handle one threat based on "chance" or too counter "luck", thats not tactics and if it was it would be a horrible way to use them. if you miss with 4 of those meltas now you have reduced your firepower to half before you get a chance to do something to the actual enemy. however many weapons you have to go through to effectively control or eliminate that one threat takes away from the way you can handle the other threats. you could have 30 meltas and although highly unlikely based on odds and regarding the statline of you models, every one of them could miss. this game is about chance and luck, there takes a degree of knowledge or as some call it skill, but in the end it is a dice game.

i remember a few weeks ago, i was playing BA and had a stormraven right in my face, every single weapon i had on the board was in range and line of sight, 3 missile launchers, 4 lascannons, 2 AC, 6ml shots, and 3 melta gun shots later i had only destroyed a weapon and shaken it with the last AC shot. i had BiD on all the heavies thanks to a lord commy LD 10. my "tactics" based on fields of fire and avenues of approach were excelent, my luck was not, and therefor my target priority was all jumbled, did i think that after my meltas i was going to have to use all of that just to get that result?


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ArbitorIan wrote:

lordsolarkodiak wrote: the only thing you can control is the ability to allow the odds to be somewhat in your favor. by this i mean listbuilding, do you have the options available to take out your enemy? that is the "skill" you all speak of, learnt over time or from the web. choosing certain armies to play as, by doing this you can take certain models that allow you to have better odds of what you need to roll....but you still need to roll it. and then movement that allows you to have the best "chances" of success. i see that some say list building to what your opponent has.....when you are going to a tournament, you dont know what your opponent is going to have and you have pre determined lists, you dont get to change your models based on your opponents at the start of your game. so yu bring all the melta guns in the world and you face absolutely no armor. its all random, you dont know what you are going to get

First, a massively common observance on Dakka is that, even with the best list, you need to know what you're doing to win. A complete newbie can have the best list in the world, but still lose. This implies that listbuilding cannot be the ONLY skill in 40k.

Second, as pointed out earlier, listbuilding is a ridiculously easy skill to aquire - because of the internet. Because of this, we can safely assume that anyone in the top half of any tournament already has this skill. By the theories above, this means that the quality of the list ceases to be important any more (since both players almost certainly have 'good' lists).

yes i can understand that, you deed to know how to use it, but all you need to know is what weapons/units are the most effective against what targets. it doesnt take long to learn how to use certain units, but it does take time to learn the synergy of all the units combined. but IMHO, ANY list can be good if you know how to use it within your army and mission. but i think that the internet can also be wrong about these lists as well. a few months ago when i started it was all about the mech vets. vets in chimeras with meltas and that was the only way you could be competitive. that could not be further from the truth. it just seems to me that some guy figured out that list and everyone followed suit not testing other builds because this ONE was effective. i started and waisted alot of money trying to change what i had to convert to a mech list....it was effective but i wasnt really good with it and worst of all i felt uncomfy playing as it.

anyway, this is a side note, the only skills you need IN game is how far to move in what direction based on which units to target with what weapons and when to use them, and then hope you roll high enough before your opponent accomplishes this goal. so dont get into assault range, target major threats first, dont use weapons on those threats that cant hurt them, and roll high.

Joey wrote:You make sure there's 8 other melta guns and some lascannons incase that one meltagun misses. Relying on a single shot for anything is very unreliable.

Once again, I'd like to note that playing more conservatively is not always the best option. If you're in a place where something literally must die for you to win the game, then yeah, bring more meltaguns.

However, outside of this, you have to pay a price for being too conservative. For example, if you bring 8 meltaguns into range of something, you are very likely bringing those meltaguns OUT of range of something else. If 2 meltaguns were enough to do the job, then the other 6 are wasted, because they should have moved somewhere else and shot at something else. In this case, you're suffering from the opportunity cost of overkill.

lordsolarkodiak wrote:anyway, this is a side note, the only skills you need IN game is how far to move in what direction based on which units to target with what weapons and when to use them, and then hope you roll high enough before your opponent accomplishes this goal.

Right, certainly the only way you can exercise skill in 40k is in movement (and it's close relative, deployment). Really, it's the only place player skill is allowed to impact the game in-game. The only other place that player skill affects the game at all is skill with lists.

But of course, since the only way skill has transmission to results is through luck...

I have found what you all are saying to be wholly true, and completely false...

Ailaros wrote:Right, certainly the only way you can exercise skill in 40k is in movement (and it's close relative, deployment)..

Or at least, this is true above a certain level. We assume you already know the capabilities of your army intimately and the capabilities of any enemy you're likely to encounter. It still might take you quite a lot of time to get to that level, and there are plenty of people who aren't at it. Despite knowing most of the armies in the game quite well, and having played for 20 years, I still go through this learning experience every time I start playing a new codex.

In a game without specific events being controlled by dice, this would be true

When I was talking about small mistakes I was specifically thinking about the movement phase. If you accidentally put one guy half an inch too close the the opponent putting him within charge range then you open yourself up to the possible loss of that squad and others around it. There are events that are not controlled by dice Movement being the main one.

As has been mentioned the statistics that people use are generally lacking in any relation to standard deviation. People who are calculating probabilities while playing the game are mostly calculating expected outcomes not calculating the percent chance of something occurring. It could be argued that at higher levels of play this is not the case, but unless your opponent is sitting there with a graphing calculator there is generally no way they are going to be able to calculate all of those odds in order to be able to complete a game in any decent amount of time.

Either you killed that unit before it got into assault, or you didn't. Either you killed that unit that was coming over to contest an objective or you didn't. Either you won close combat, or you lost and got caught in a sweeping advance. The results of these events are extremely important. The results are determined by dice. Therefore the dice are extremely important.

The dice (and therefore luck) is the transmission system of 40k, because only luck actually determines the outcome of events. Therefore player skill is an extension.. Were of luck (namely, your ability to manipulate it). Was this chess, where player skill had a direct and proprietary effect on events, then the only thing that would matter would be player skill, as that skill determines 100% if you took his rook or not. 40k isn't like that, though. You can move the right pieces into the right places, but that doesn't kill the land raider. Only the dice do that.

I cannot follow you here. First of all: Luck and dice are 2 completely different things. As I explained the dice aspect of 40k contains both skill and luck as well as matchup and playing skill do. Dice is just the lowest of those 3 parameters.

And you seem to completely ignore probability of outcomes. If I have a melta in 6" of a landraider or if I have a lasgun in front of it is a bigger difference in result than rolling outside of the statistical average.

If I have an army of lasgunbearers and face an army of landraiders I cannot win a killpoint mission regardless of dice and regardless of playing skill
If I have an equal army and outclass my opponent by far, I dont care for dice
If I am equal to my opponent and the armies are equal, dice shift the result.

So if, as we both seem to agree, that "skill is knowledge about the likelyness of certain dice results and the ability to make use of that", what does this quote actually mean? How does an increase in the knowledge of the odds make the game less dependent on the actual outcome of those dice?

Certainly having more skill allows you to keep playing the odds you want to play even after calamity, at least, moreso than a worse player. It doesn't make the outcome of any given event any less dependent on the actual result of die rolls.

Skill concerning dice reduces the possibilities to be outside the odds. Why?
Because 1. I know the odds better, 2. I can force better odds for me, 3. If the expectations are not matched, the impact isnt that high, because this event was taken into the equation before. If skill reaches perfection, the probability being outside the odds reaches close to 0

The point here is that the better you get, the more exactingly you play the odds, but at some point you get to a place where you are able to make decisions that are of finer resolution than the deviation of the particular odds itself. This reflects a common complaint some people have about mathhammer. Just because you know you have a 60% chance to blow up a land raider, doesn't mean that you actually blow up the land raider. Over a very long term against an infinite number of land raiders in these same circumstances you will blow up more than you don't, but you can't predict the individual die roll, and it's the individual die roll that actually determines whether you blew it up or not.

Player skill does not determine the outcome of any given event. The dice do.

Actually the better you get, the wider is the array of your expectations. If you are skilled, it is more likely that an event occurs according to your expectations, than when you are not skilled. Following that logic, it is mandatory, that when you are infinitely skilled, you expect every single possibility to happen. This leads to a different view on dice (I won't say luck, because luck is a different thing).
You should plan the following:

If I have a certain situation that includes dice, there is one way to think:

There is a landraider, it has to die. So what have we got? Ah 3 meltaguns, that should be enough to do something with it.
After shooting if the landraider is destroyed all is good. If not, it was not what we expected.

So what can we do in order to avoid such a situation?

1. way: More meltaguns. It is more likely to work
2. way: Plan B. What does the landraider actually do next turn? Can I take another turn with him on the board? If not, I made a bad plan, because the possibility of not killing the landraider must be part of my plan in the first place.

If it is primary target: Both, if it is not, only the second way.

So what do dice do?

They indicate the number of possibilities I have. If the first Lascannon pops a Rhino my 5 other are free to shoot somewhere else. If the 5th also doesnt kill it, I have only one possibility with the last one: Shoot at the Rhino. After that when the last one also fails, I have to fall back to movement actions to get rid of the problem. Maybe I have to fall back one more turn to avoid a charge, maybe I have to pull a squad in front as a block unit.

40k is more akin to poker than it is to blackjack. With blackjack all one can do is play the math hammer and hope for the best. With poker the game is first and foremost about what you can do with your assets against an opponents assets, and how to manipulate the field to your advantage. In 40k and poker luck is a fickle mistress that comes and goes, but ultimately ends up averaging to a zero sum.

40k is more akin to poker than it is to blackjack. With blackjack all one can do is play the math hammer and hope for the best. With poker the game is first and foremost about what you can do with your assets against an opponents assets, and how to manipulate the field to your advantage. In 40k and poker luck is a fickle mistress that comes and goes, but ultimately ends up averaging to a zero sum.

This (particularly the highlighted one) is of course also correct.

And I might add: Expectation is not equal to statistical average. If I always expect the statistical average result to happen, I am a fool. This is imho the mistake mathhammer junkies most of the time make.
There are more possibilities than 0 and 1 (killed and alive).

In case of vehicles: all damage result rolls are possible with different possibilities. (immobilized: not able to move, but able to shoot, weapon destroyed: most useful weapon gone but otherwise unscathed, stunned: temporarily inactive, shaken: temporarily not shooting)

In case of infantry: one dies, more than one dies (Wounds are lost), important squadmembers are killed, all are dead, pinned, 25% casualties which opens up the possibility to retreat, squad is small enough for me to handle them in assault

Most of the time, I have a clear firing discipline: Primary target, secondary target tertiary target and so on.

Being unlucky just shortens the list of accomplished targets. Being lucky widens the list. So its just a matter of possibilities. But the most important things almost always work. First the less important things or the unlikely things don't work.
If I had to rely on unlikely things I am either incompetent or at the brink of massacre.

Right, certainly the only way you can exercise skill in 40k is in movement (and it's close relative, deployment). Really, it's the only place player skill is allowed to impact the game in-game.

This is inaccurate. There is also skill in shooting. Picking the correct targets, shooting in the most efficient order (these two aspects interact with each other). And also in assault: choosing a suitable target, the decision about multi assault or not, if yes, then with whom and with how many.
There is also time management and force balance judgement that requires skill.

Wall o' teeexxxtttt

There are some things I like in here. I liked this little summary-

ThatEdGuy wrote:To a certain extent I agree with this. In theory two completely flawless opponents will never make a mistake and the outcome will be completely determined by the dice.

I agree with it- but what are two completely flawless opponents?
Is this a game being played by two computers who are determining the best possible course of action, or human beings who are determining what they believe to be the best course of action.
Are we not men? (A: We are devo!)

I also liked this part of the wall-

Ailaros wrote:So, the question then becomes, what sets the "right" odds you should play for any given circumstance? The answer, of course, is your opponent. Your opponent moved things the turn before, and so changed what needs to be attacked at what level of priority in your turn. If player skill is the ability to play exactly the odds you want, then player skill vis. a vis. your opponent is to give your opponent odds that he will have difficulty playing
An excellent observation

Ailaros wrote:Tricking your opponent into caring only 50% about something when he SHOULD have cared 50.00001% about something is scarcely a difference. It's scarcely a difference, of course, compared to the dice.

And this is also true, but how often are the odds different by 0.00001%?
I see player skill also combining planning for the good, the bad and the ugly. You point one lascannon at that battlewagon and vaporize it, so what other targets do your other 5 lascannons have to pick from, good (other vehicles) or bad (grots.)? You point your lascannons at the same wagon and shake it up a bit, but fail to destroy it (the wagon is slowed down, but you were unable to impact the rest of the opponents army, so now you need to plan another crack at the BW- not to mention the rest of the opponents army. Its not all bad, but its damage control time), or the ugly (you miss with all your shots/fail to penetrate/fail to get through cover saves. Damage control, damage control D:! )

I don't think 40k is entirely without skill, but.. just about every decision point of the game is almost immediately obvious when you understand the percentages on various actions. I agree with Ailaros, that most of the game's tough decision making comes in the list-building, and not really on the board. Luck is a huge factor, but I don't know anybody who never changes his plan based on the current game state. It isn't some terrible AI trying to play the game.

Once you get past the basics, most of 40k is pretty simple once it's on the table.

-Nazdreg- wrote:If you are skilled, it is more likely that an event occurs according to your expectations, than when you are not skilled. Following that logic, it is mandatory, that when you are infinitely skilled, you expect every single possibility to happen.

See, and I definitely disagree with this. You can play certain odds, but you can't predict the actual outcome of events, because randomness is unpredictable. Knowing the exactitude of the odds you are playing will not make anything happen by itself. You can't shout "I have an X% chance of killing you" at a land raider and have that blow up the raider. It's the dice themselves that determine the outcome. All you can do is play the odds.

Knowing the statistical averages and deviation levels certainly helps you pick better odds to play (this is where your idea of expectation fits in), but it doesn't do anything until you roll the die, and the die tell you what happens.

-Nazdreg- wrote:So what can we do in order to avoid such a situation?

1. way: More meltaguns. It is more likely to work
2. way: Plan B. What does the landraider actually do next turn? Can I take another turn with him on the board? If not, I made a bad plan, because the possibility of not killing the landraider must be part of my plan in the first place.

And this is exactly what I was talking about with the idea of player skill being shrouded by the actual results of dice. Perhaps three meltaguns was the correct number to bring to the situation. Two may have been giving the tank too low of a priority, while four might mean that you're taking away a meltagun that was really needed elsewhere. If you roll poorly, you can not go back and say "I should have brought more meltaguns" because in this case you'd actually be making a mistake. You played the right odds, and they failed. The failure isn't indicative of having played the odds wrong.

I've definitely seen this with my own eyes before. People who let the results of die roll into their calculations of how they should have behaved, and thus should behave in the future. When people get lead around by their anecdotes, ugly things happen.

Of course, plan B-ing isn't a bad idea, but it's not required. You can always assess new odds as they arrive.

schadenfreude wrote:40k is more akin to poker than it is to blackjack.

Oh, but it's really not. 40k and poker would only be the same if you got to hide your dice from your opponent, or if you played poker in such a way where everybody could see each other's cards. Poker is a game where you play against the other player. There is a random element to the game, but that element often doesn't have a direct impact on the result of the game. Poker is a game of bluff, and whoever bluffs best wins. There is no analogue to that in 40k, as you can always see your opponents pieces, and can always see the results of his die rolls.

40k is a game where you're playing the dice, not playing the opponent, because the dice are the only thing that matter here. Was there some mechanism that said "you can either lose three of your orks right now, or I can roll the dice to see how many you lose", then perhaps the two would have more in common. As it is, though, the random element is the transmission system of this game. It's not you versus another player, it's you versus another player through the medium of die rolls.

Jihallah wrote: what are two completely flawless opponents?

Well, with reference to the original article, the people don't need to be flawless, they just need to be perfectly at the same skill level (and even then, they don't need to be perfect, as the theory talks about "AS opponent skill becomes similar" not "WHEN opponent skill becomes similar". Add to that the fact that the better you get the more difficult is to get better and the less getting better matters compared to other game mechanics, it then follows that better players are more similar than worse players.

Jihallah wrote:And this is also true, but how often are the odds different by 0.00001%?

Which brings me to this. Yes, most of the time player skill won't have that much resolution (part of the "as approaches" thing). You're talking about another point I was making here. Knowing the odds better and better stops making nearly as much of a difference once you breach the coarseness of the random generation system itself. You can only point lascannons in discreet amounts (as in, by ones - no pointing half a lascannon at this target and the other half at the other), and that lascannon still has to hit, pen, and damage on six-sided die, which only have a 16.66% resolution.

Once you get past this point of odds-knowing and odds-playing, I very much agree that getting even better matters much, much less. Even if it mattered the same, those tiny increases in odds playing skill would only show up over many, many games, becoming something easily dismissed as an anomaly.

Panzeh wrote:Once you get past the basics, most of 40k is pretty simple once it's on the table.

While I agree with this...

Panzeh wrote: I agree with Ailaros, that most of the game's tough decision making comes in the list-building, and not really on the board.

... I don't actually with this. I see player skill being roughly equal between list building and movement on the field. The real difference between the two is that list-building doesn't directly input into the random part of the game in the same way that movement does, and that list-building is a lot easier to "cheat" at. The internet can tell you if you've got a crappy list, but the internet can't tell you if you've moved your units in the right way.