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Hi guys, I was wondering if there is a way to play 40k all by myself. In Singapore, I cannot find people to play with and,my hobby store is located so far away.

I would like to see this answered too..
I do not get to play as much as i would like..

I dont see why it couldnt be played solo, its all just dice rolls and measuring tapes if you already have the units. I think i would like to see a solo match played

You'd just need two armies and to play them neutrally. Like the man said, when you get down to the basic elements of 40K, it's just measurements and dice rolls.

You might even look into some of the skirmish level rules online like Kill Team. Can enact small scale battles with heavier terrain, and easily play against yourself.

It works, but is a bit tedious. I've done it to test units against eachother.

Maybe something smaller like KillTeam would work better.

I play against myself in 40k. It has it's perks (ex. No need to worry about rules arguments and homebrew material is all good) but then again, it also has it's downsides as well (ex. Playing alone may get... well... lonely).

I feel as if I would probably argue with myself about the rules all the time >.>

Singapore is not that big, and they had a team go to the European Team Championships, so there must be someone around for you to play against.

Do people still use Vassal or other online tabletops? I know there are ways to play remotely if you just need to get a game in, and have the internet.

There are no secrets in 40k. Some games that have hidden assets (cards, etc.) that are revealed at just the right time make for bad solo play. But as was said, once you hit the table in 40k, it's all just dice and measuring.

I get in far fewer games then I like. I scratch the wargaming itch by posting here.

A buddy of mine plays full solo games and takes notes along the way in order to practice his strategies and tactics. Of course, he is a lil more hardcore than I am.

It would be to hard to play solo. Well really its easy because it's just dice rolling and measuring but it isn't any fun solo.
I've just done it to test units basically.

The problem with it is you always end up favoring on faction and you always know what the next move is going to be because your making all the moves.
There are a few solo scenarios in the Dark Vengeance book that can be easily adapted to other armies you might want to give that a shot.

I think that if you go to the local game store where you are (even though it's far away) and just talk to the shop owner and ask if he can post on a bulletin board your contact info and stuff and other players do the same so then you might find someone closer to where you live.

I made up a way to play solo 40K as an alternative to just playing as both sides of a battle, with that method I found that you couldn't fairly employ tactics as you would also be considering how to counter them. To solve this I decided that one of the two sides needed to control itself in a way, like a computer controlled opponent that had a set of guideline and rules it followed when dictating what its models did. With this method you could plan tactics against better without second guessing yourself.
I'll try to explain it.

The method I came up with involved Daemons (as I had alot of them) and it fitted quite nicely into there fluff, it was basically a daemonic invasion simulator. I think tyranids would work similarly in theme although you could use any army.

Firstly I'd choose a points value and setup my chosen army on the battlefield with a decent amount of terrain.

I made a table that listed all my different daemon units and assigned numbers to them so I could roll a D100 and randomly select a unit, more common troop units were given a bigger number range than greater daemons to make them more likely to show up. I listed the units of the different gods in ascending order of power and when generating a unit if it was already on the battlefield you would instead select the next unit up on the table making it more likely that more powerful daemons would appear if there lesser follower were already present.

At the start of each turn I'd randomly determine a number of daemons that would arrive via deepstrike onto the table that turn. The range of this random number depends on the points you were playing and how powerful you wanted the daemon forces to be. I think I'd start with D6+6 daemonic unit s and in future turns roll D6+6-(halve the number of daemon units on the table). This is really up to you though and takes a little experimentation.

After rolling for how many units would arrive I then rolled to see where on the battlefield they would Deepstrike, I devided it up into six 2'x2' squares and then assigned each a number and just randomly rolled to see which area each unit came down in. After that just scatter them from the centre of that area. If a unit would mishap I placed it as close as possible to where it should have arrived to avoid myself trying to force mishaps.

Once on the table the daemons had a simple set of guidelines to follow:

They would cast psychic powers, blessings on themselves if beneficial or the closest friendly unit that they were beneficial too. Maledictions and Psychic shooting attacks on the closes enemy unit they could effect/hurt.
They would move towards the closest enemy unit they could actually hurt.
They would shoot the closest enemy they could actually hurt, if none were in range and also non were in assault range then they would run towards the closest enemy they could actually hurt.
They would assault the closest enemy that they could hurt.
They would consolidate towards the closest enemy they could hurt.

Obviously some things will come up that aren't covered by the above that you'll have to decide but you get the general idea, daemons arrive and kill the closest targets.
Your army has to try to stay alive for as long as possible.


Give it a try I found it quite fun and alot more interesting that attempting to play a proper game against yourself

I would recommend Vassal. I haven´t tried it, but I heard it is good though.

It's possible. But a little bit boring as you know what your oppenet is going to do!

If you want to play solo it would be best to avoid standard battles. A big part of the game is not knowing what your opponent will do next and if you are playing both sides then you will be missing this factor.

I've contemplated playing solo and I think the best way would be to create some kind of narrative. Take a small force or even an entire army and have your army try to invade a defended position. That way you can make tactical decisions while your "opponent" (the defending force) can just react to your actions. Alternatively you can hand pick a force to defend an objective/base and just send wave after wave of enemies against them to see how long you hold out. You could create waves of various strength and assign each a number. At the beginning of your turn, roll a D3 or D6 and see which wave will come into play.

Those are just some ideas, you can get very creative and make more complex rules/scenarios.

It can kind of work if you assign more forces to one side and let it run on "auto-pilot" while you take the other side as commnander. For example, you give the enemy (tyranids are good for this) a 50% boost in points but force them to always go straight toward a single (or nearest) objective. Because so much of the game depends on countering the other player's move it's hard to run two equal forces objectively.

lootas wrote:
Hi guys, I was wondering if there is a way to play 40k all by myself. In Singapore, I cannot find people to play with and,my hobby store is located so far away.

The video game "Dawn of War" is about the best you're going to get.

lootas wrote:
Hi guys, I was wondering if there is a way to play 40k all by myself. In Singapore, I cannot find people to play with and,my hobby store is located so far away.

When I am testing new army builds I just set them up in a game against another of my armies and swap sides of the table and play as normal, moving minis, declaring charges and rolling dice as each "player" myself. No trick or fanciness to it. Unless you are looking for running your army normally and then having some kind of scripted or random tables to use to not run the opposing force yourself in which case I can't help you on that one.

Skriker

I've done it with small forces to learn both armies a bit. I basically decided on a strategy for a certain army, and had simple objectives. It wasn't as fun as playing against other people of course, but it was good way to test some things, learn new units/rules, and watching something unfold from both sides was a good mental exercise I found.

Thks you guys for giving all these advice.

 amanita wrote:
It can kind of work if you assign more forces to one side and let it run on "auto-pilot" while you take the other side as commnander. For example, you give the enemy (tyranids are good for this) a 50% boost in points but force them to always go straight toward a single (or nearest) objective. Because so much of the game depends on countering the other player's move it's hard to run two equal forces objectively.

Yeah, I'd do something akin to this. Instead of setting up two sides and trying to play them neutrally, instead set up some sort of a scenario that's more like a puzzle that you solve. You set up the "bad guys" in any way you want, and give them some sort of predictable behavior pattern, or particular objectives, or something, and then you try and solve your own puzzle while giving yourself appropriate restrictions to adjust the difficulty level.

You can also try and throw in some randomness as well, like if you set things up to clear out a city, you can make units be randomly assigned to certain places. Maybe your guardsmen kick the door in and there's nothing there, or maybe they kick the door in and there's a lictor, which automatically triggers other random units to appear nearby, or whatever.

I think the only problem is that it's going to take you longer to set up the scenarios than it will be to play them...

... perhaps just looking a bit harder for your opponents would be the easiest way of it.

chiefbigredman wrote:
It would be to hard to play solo. Well really its easy because it's just dice rolling and measuring but it isn't any fun solo.
I've just done it to test units basically.

The problem with it is you always end up favoring on faction and you always know what the next move is going to be because your making all the moves.

I tend to end up acting like two different people when I do that.
I'll be doing CSM vs Orks, and my brain seems to alternate from "DEATH, DECAY, DESTRUCTION" to "WAAAAGH! THE ORKS!".

But, that's my personal insanity

hey lootas, im staying in singapore too. Just starting a DA Ravenwing Army, maybe after i complete it we can meet up to play a game!

There's another hobby shop, Gamersaurus, I see from their FB page they run a lot of events

 EVIL INC wrote:
A buddy of mine plays full solo games and takes notes along the way in order to practice his strategies and tactics. Of course, he is a lil more hardcore than I am.

I feel like you're not gonna learn a ton playing against yourself aside from the base mechanics of the game. You always know what you're going to do, and a lot of the strategy of this game is reacting to what your opponent does, expected or not.

Vassal. I play it every now and again. its a great way to test models before you buy them and to even test our armies you dont even own.