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So a few times now I've tried asking for some help with SM list building guidelines and optimal loadouts/options.

Way back when I started using the site, I used the SM article for that help, but that article is quite out of date now.

I made a thread asking if there was a general SM tactica, I made a thread for my shooting in the dark 1k list, and I made a thread asking for help with specific units, all of which were viewed and ignored.

Call me crazy, but I almost never see threads in the relevant WFB forums go more than a day without some kind of reply. The WFB crew here are always johnny on the spot with advice and tips.

So why is the 40k crowd here so seemingly unhelpful?

Bolter and Chainsword is pretty much just as bad, not having a general tactica up for SM 6th edition, and getting only a single reply from a rather new player.

If SM are such big sellers, you'd think there would be plenty of SM players with advice to offer.

/rant

This is why I've been posting less in the 40k sections. Though I do try to be helpful to new players, the crowd in there is rather toxic.

I think it comes down to a lack of information diversity and an unwillingness to shell out the same old information every time someone asks. Also, it can often be hard to provide applicable information, regardless of whether a question is posed generally or specifically.

What I mean is that when someone asks a very broad question like, "will this list work?" or "what works well in this codex?" or "what are this faction's tactics?" the answer is inevitably something that is based on (perceived) averages across all of the 40k meta. This gives a response that, while broadly applicable, often seems to promote "net-listing" and strict uniformity.

Conversely, when a very specific question is asked, the response inevitably only applies in a vacuum; it's valid only in under a very specific set of circumstances that often render the response useless from a broader list-building/strategic perspective. Moreover, this type of question-response aggravates the issue of "tailoring" in the same way that broad responses promote "net-listing."

What does this have to do with not getting responses from people? Well, I'd suppose that it has to do with many people having seen the same question-answer combinations so many times that it no longer seems worth it to rehash the same points again and again. Given the way questions get interpreted (see my above points), there are actually not very many of these "Q&A templates" that a person needs to see before questions in 40k discussion start to all look old and familiar.

Additionally, 40k is a rather niche hobby, so the volume of players that are regularly reporting their findings with various units is somewhat small. Thus you get a lot of players pigeonholed into very locally-specific gameplay mind-sets, which limits responsiveness to something along the lines of "You should play the way I do" or "Your meta is weird, do whatever you want." Again, this is something that people tend to get tired of repeating to people (even if they like to advocate for their play-style).

Anyway, that's just my 2 cents on the matter.

because people seem to be moving away from min/max mentality. they play whatever they think looks cool. you should probably do the same.

the game is very easy to break IMO. breaking it will just piss people off and make them not want to play you.

 Xca|iber wrote:
and an unwillingness to shell out the same old information every time someone asks.

I admit I get like this. Like, I try to give advice when someone asks about Tyranids, since I do know something about playing them. I give advice on what are good units, my experiences with sub par units, and it generally comes out to a heft chunk of information. Then a week later another thread comes up about someone wanting to start Tyranid, and I basically post the same thing, slightly condensed. Then a week later a third thread, and I've just lost the motivation. Especially when one of the other threads is still on page 1. What kills it for me more is when someone comes in after a few long, informative posts and says 'Tyranids sucks balls this edition' and the person quotes them, says they won't bother with the army, and never posts again.

kb305 wrote:
because people seem to be moving away from min/max mentality. they play whatever they think looks cool. you should probably do the same.

the game is very easy to break IMO. breaking it will just piss people off and make them not want to play you.

I'm not looking for broken things. I'm looking for answers to questions like:

Tactical marines: Which heavy weapons are ideal/optimal overall?

That is a very simple question. Which of the weapons is an overall performer. Clearly they have different roles, but as I have no experience in the game, I don't know what those roles are.

And the reason I'm asking the specific questions I am is because I have X amount of models to assemble and not enough bodies for every weapon to get one. I have 10 tactical marines at the moment. 1 gets a flamer, 9 get bolters, and the last one is the one I need an answer for.

The same goes for pretty much all of my questions. They have less to do with the game and more to do with how I move forward with assembly. I don't want to waste a marine that I've spent a good amount of money already customizing on a weapon that will never get used.

If it were just regular stock marines, I wouldn't care so much. But the only thing stock on my marines is the legs, arms and backpacks. Heads, torsos and weapons are all from rather expensive kits so I can't just whip them up cheaply.

At any rate, WFB players seem to answer noob questions endlessly. Dark Elves alone have about 4 or 5 regular users who are quick to reply with sage advice on how to play, model, and design that army. Surely there are more SM players on Dakka than there are DE players, and yet SM questions just sit unanswered.

I understand taking units that I like, which I'm already doing even if those units are not min/max. But I still want those units to perform as best they can, which is where I need help.

Let me use your question as an example of why 40k players (such as myself) are a bit apathetic about posting tactics.

"What are optimal/ideal heavy weapons for Tac squads?" Well, to answer that first you need to specify the squad's role, including targets, likely battlefield positioning, common enemies in your meta, what the rest of your list is doing, whether you want a single cohesive army or separate cells operating individually, etc, etc.

For each of those things that you specify, you drive the answer towards an increasingly useless piece of advice that will not help you make list-choices or tactical decisions (except perhaps to drive the battle towards the particular situation where the advice is valid).

For each of those things you don't specify, you drive the answer towards an increasingly general (i.e. netlisty, min/max-y) piece of advice that will only help you if you adhere to the commonly accepted methods of using your army. (e.g. "how to arm a dreadnought" --> "spam riflemen"

Now, these conditions lead to only a few possible outcomes:
1) The answer to your question is the basic tagline of the current meta. Since "everyone" knows this, nobody wants to post it. Stupid, but it happens.
2) The answer to your question is extremely specific, which either leaves you with "Yes, this works like this" or "You shouldn't do any of those things, do this instead..." In either event, people probably won't post unless they have experience in that specific situation, which dramatically reduces the amount of posters that are willing to answer your question.

I don't know how it is in WFB, but this is pretty much what I see in the 40k forums.

EDIT: Also, the option of trying to leave your question only moderately specific does work sometimes, but often people will just ignore it or ask you to make the question more specific or more general, rather than actually answering it.

The other issue I suppose is when people finally bother to post the tactica that it gets buried under a myriad of the same question it answered in details. If it happens too often people stop caring and stop making them. Oh and the odd time a perfectly sound tactic will be posted only to find itself bombarded by inane tactics.

The thing the FB forum seems to have going for it is that it appears smaller in comparison, so the community there sort of feels closer.

 Aerethan wrote:
So a few times now I've tried asking for some help with SM list building guidelines and optimal loadouts/options.

Way back when I started using the site, I used the SM article for that help, but that article is quite out of date now.

I made a thread asking if there was a general SM tactica, I made a thread for my shooting in the dark 1k list, and I made a thread asking for help with specific units, all of which were viewed and ignored.

Call me crazy, but I almost never see threads in the relevant WFB forums go more than a day without some kind of reply. The WFB crew here are always johnny on the spot with advice and tips.

So why is the 40k crowd here so seemingly unhelpful?

Bolter and Chainsword is pretty much just as bad, not having a general tactica up for SM 6th edition, and getting only a single reply from a rather new player.

If SM are such big sellers, you'd think there would be plenty of SM players with advice to offer.

/rant

No Aerethan!! Come back to WHFB all will be forgiven, we all get round base curious at some point in our lives its no big deal.

I feel you, bro. I tried to get advice on my Wolves & Angels list in three different forums (Tactics, Lists, and General). Every single one of them got me about 30 views and no responses, followed by the threads getting buried by the sands of time.

Unfortunately, I have to agree with the fact that there are no "instant win" lists for any army. Problem winds up being that a list that's good in one group might not be as good in another. Prime example, I play in two separate groups. In group A, which meets weekly at my FLGS, I see a lot of Marine players - there are Space Wolves, Space Marines, Dark Angels (admittedly somewhat different than vanilla Marines) a second Marine player, and two ringers who play Blood Angels. Aside from them, there's me and one other guy as Ork players, one guy who occasionally brings his Necrons, a player who runs Imperial Guard (he's one of the Marine players above, he flips between the two), and one Daemon player. So what do I do with my lists? I build them mostly around things that Marines would have trouble with.

On the other hand, my second group is me and three others who meet up once a week to play a 2v2 team game. I know for a fact that I'm fighting Necrons, no matter what, and I can always be sure I'm either going up against Eldar or Chaos Space Marines. I've tried running the same list in both groups, and the same list that has me on top of the league at my FLGS got flattened by the alliance of Eldar and Necrons. I have to bring a completely different list to even stand a chance in my second group.

Really, the problem is nobody knows your group quite like you do. It doesn't matter if you tell everyone who, exactly, plays in your group, because even then every army has different playstyles. Nothing but prior experience can tell you how best to combat your opponents because you're the only one who knows them well enough to get an idea of how to fight them effectively.

I could provide you with detailed info about Necrons, but the only thing I know from tin cans is what does not work against me

It's pricey, but if you face a meta with a lot of different enemies, you are best off using magnets on your models in order to equip them as individual as possible.

As others have already stated: the equipment depends on your meta. I would never give them a flamer, it's more of a toss-up between a plasma cannon and a lasgun. If you face a lot of high-armor vehicles, take the lascannon. If you rather face a lot of MEQ infantry, go for the plasma cannon.

That's the issue with your fantasy example: weapons over there are a lot easier. Take WoC for example. You basically have two options: s&b or halberds. Halberds are the statistically superior weapon thus it's a no-brainer. This is very different in 40k and thus it's harder to give advice on how to equip your units.

Thus the advice given most often is the exact one I gave you: adapt to your local meta. I could forge a list that excels at killing infantry but if that list faces vehicle spam, you are fethed.

There barely are all-comer armies in 40k with the exception of currently overpowered (Necron flyer spam) or massively overpowered (IG flyer spam) or GK armies.

Vanilla marines are right in the middle of the power scale and thus have to adapt to the local meta and thus your enemies.

That being said, if you are in need of advice, feel free to PM me / give a link to your thread, but be advised that all advice I can provide comes from a Necron perspective.

I have found that the best way to elicit a response or activity on a thread is a rather sad one;

What you need to do is ask a friend to start the thread for you.
Once he has done that, you "answer" the question, but here is the kicker; you answer it blatantly "wrong".

It is my experience that a lot of people will happily spend the time correcting a misconception and thereby giving advice, but not take the time to answer in the first place.

An internet discussion relies on some rather difficult things:
* The OP phrasing his question clearly and precise enough that a a concise answer is possible
* The readers actually reading and understanding the scope of the question and then answering only the question, but first checking if someone already replied with what they wanted to say.

Most of the time discussion go off-topic because the question is too vague, (some of) the readers misunderstood it or they didn't read the preceding replies.

YMDCC's big threads are a prime example of this:
"Are Tactical Marines good?"
It is impossible to say what answer they want, so they either get a wildy off course discussion about the merits of tactical squads or the thread dies without having lived. And answering them 'Yes' or 'No' doesn't help them either.

 Jubear wrote:

 Aerethan wrote:
So a few times now I've tried asking for some help with SM list building guidelines and optimal loadouts/options.

Way back when I started using the site, I used the SM article for that help, but that article is quite out of date now.

I made a thread asking if there was a general SM tactica, I made a thread for my shooting in the dark 1k list, and I made a thread asking for help with specific units, all of which were viewed and ignored.

Call me crazy, but I almost never see threads in the relevant WFB forums go more than a day without some kind of reply. The WFB crew here are always johnny on the spot with advice and tips.

So why is the 40k crowd here so seemingly unhelpful?

Bolter and Chainsword is pretty much just as bad, not having a general tactica up for SM 6th edition, and getting only a single reply from a rather new player.

If SM are such big sellers, you'd think there would be plenty of SM players with advice to offer.

/rant

No Aerethan!! Come back to WHFB all will be forgiven, we all get round base curious at some point in our lives its no big deal.

Fear not, Brother of the Flame. I would never leave my square bases behind. This whole 40k thing is a side project I've wanted to do for some time now, but it will never be my primary game.


I suppose I could have worded the questions like this:

What Tactical Marine heavy weapon is the most versatile?

Perhaps that is specific enough of what I'm asking.

Plasma Cannon then.

It deals with most infantry you will encounter, uses the blast template and can also damage light-medium vehicles.

OP, I'd like to offer a suggestion next time you post a question: Add something of your own to show you're exercising some measure of critical thinking. You'll be more likely to get a response.

Take the following questions:

1. What's the best way to build unit "X"?
2. I have the option of fielding a unit with "X" upgrade or "Y" upgrade. I'm leaning towards "X" upgrade as my local meta has a lot of "Z" units and "X" is the obvious choice to deal with them. With that being said, I'm going to my first local tournament and I don't know what to expect. I usually field units "A", "B", and "C". Thoughts?
3. I'm having trouble deciding on a loadout for unit "X". Upgrade "Y" seems like the obvious choice but I have a ton of similar upgrades across the rest of my list which consists of ..., how are others fielding them? How is it working out for you?

The difference isn't subtle, #2 and #3 will typically invite more discussion as they make the person asking seem more interested in developing an understanding and less like a baby bird with it's mouth open.

Why not use the 40k tactics forum for 40k tactics questions?
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/forums/show/18.page
Or the 40k Army Lists forum for 40k army lists?
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/forums/show/14.page

 Kroothawk wrote:
Why not use the 40k tactics forum for 40k tactics questions?
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/forums/show/18.page
Or the 40k Army Lists forum for 40k army lists?
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/forums/show/14.page

I was about to suggest the same.

When I'm in the 40K discussion sub-forum, I rarely even open obvious tactica threads because I'm not in the mood for it. I go to the tactica subforum when I want to discuss tactics.

Not to be surly or anything. The 40k Tactic subforum gets a LOT of traffic. Nearly every morning, the front page is completely full with either new threads or threads that have had a response.

And missile launchers are the most effective heavy weapon in a tactical squad, all other things being equal. If you're drop podding to tank hunt, then Sgt with combi-melta, meltagun, and multi-melta. IMHO, but I'm the worst in my play group for tactics. I'm the best painter, though. *GOLD STAR!*