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I just think that it generally comes down to who has the better army.

If the armies are (approximately) equal, then it comes down to tabletop skill.

If both players are (approximately) of equal skill, then it comes down to luck.


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DevianID wrote:I disagree with the 80% list building and 20% tabletop skill. If this was true, then by simply using a very good list off the internet a player would improve their total win record greatly.

Uh, yeah.

This principle is the reason why Dakka exists.

I agree with Mannahin's outlook, especially Hyd's summary. Yet I see the skill ceiling as being pretty finite, if not low. You do need to know literally everything about the game, but as far as player choices there isn't that much to think about. Once you are able to calculate the odds of success on the fly the game almost plays itself. I know the odds of my Rhinos making it down that path if his big guns remain unmolested, and combined with my odds of silencing them I can determine if taking that route is viable. Rinse and repeat about 3 times and there's your game plan for the turn.

What separates the good players from the great? I suppose the skill is in not getting distracted. I don't know, I don't play tournies.

DarkHound wrote:I agree with Mannahin's outlook, especially Hyd's summary. Yet I see the skill ceiling as being pretty finite, if not low. You do need to know literally everything about the game, but as far as player choices there isn't that much to think about. Once you are able to calculate the odds of success on the fly the game almost plays itself. I know the odds of my Rhinos making it down that path if his big guns remain unmolested, and combined with my odds of silencing them I can determine if taking that route is viable. Rinse and repeat about 3 times and there's your game plan for the turn.

Yep. Calculate the most dangerous enemy unit vs your ability to destroy enemy units, and go through them like a computer array.
Unless you're using something really bad or your enemy is being a dick there's not really much more to it.
I'm sure we've all had instances where 3 twin-linked lascannons have done nothing whatsoever against some back armour 10.

DarkHound wrote:I agree with Mannahin's outlook, especially Hyd's summary. Yet I see the skill ceiling as being pretty finite, if not low. You do need to know literally everything about the game, but as far as player choices there isn't that much to think about. Once you are able to calculate the odds of success on the fly the game almost plays itself. I know the odds of my Rhinos making it down that path if his big guns remain unmolested, and combined with my odds of silencing them I can determine if taking that route is viable. Rinse and repeat about 3 times and there's your game plan for the turn.

What separates the good players from the great? I suppose the skill is in not getting distracted. I don't know, I don't play tournies.

Not getting distracted and making mistakes is absolutely a big part of it.

I also find that against those better players other parts of game strategy and tactics become more important and prominent. The choices made about where exactly to put objectives; what exactly to Reserve, and where exactly to bring it on. Setting up positions in the placement of objectives and your own deployment and movement to set up favorable situations or encourage or discourage your opponent in moving particular units particular places. You can stack the odds in your favor and create better localized matchups of forces if you have foresight and are able to quickly assimilate and apply the knowledge of your particular opponent's army list, and the battlefield state as objectives are deployed, to make better starting positions and to help create better positions mid-game.

Sometimes a lucky die roll will determine it, if all other factors are equal, but IME in those situations it almost never would have come down to that die roll if one player had just made fewer mistakes/slightly better decisions.

Army lists, to me, are mostly a minimum hurdle. Once you get your list up to a certain level of quality and efficiency, where it's a competent tournament army, against most opponents you're going to be on relatively even footing as far as the lists go.

Hyd wrote:Ailaros : dice have the last word on every decision of the player.
Mannahnin : the player decides which dice are roll.

I actually already agree with both of these statements.

DarkHound wrote:What separates the good players from the great? I suppose the skill is in not getting distracted. I don't know, I don't play tournies.

Firstly, playing at tourneys means you play at tourneys, nothing more.

Secondly, I'd certainly agree. If skill is playing the odds the way you want them, then more skill means more always playing the odds the more exact way that you want to play them. The human brain isn't designed to handle random very well, which causes it to do all sorts of crazy things invariably leading to crazy decisions where you're not actually playing the odds that you think that you are. Suddenly, for example, you might shorten your odds of something by WAY too much (for example, a couple of bad vehicle penetration rolls early in a shooting phase may cause you to unload way too much firepower on it later in the phase), or you may start playing with longer odds than you actually realise that you're playing with (I've already had a few bad pen rolls on that vehicle, so the next one HAS to be a good one, right?).

When faced with randomness, the human brain starts thinking wrongly and often has a frighteningly short gap between reasoned thinking and thinking based on any number of logical fallacies. The more skilled you are, the more you resist that. However, the more you think "If only I would have done this instead of that" - the more you think you actually control the outcome of a game based on chance - the more quickly your brain spirals into madness and fallacy.

Resisting logical mistakes can't actually blow up your opponent's land raider, or guarantee you run 6" to make it onto an objective on time. Only the dice determine that. Skill allows you to make future decisions on a random element based on the outcomes of recent events (also determined by the random element), but it doesn't actually let you direct the outcome of the event.

I mean, if skill were what was really important, and luck a minimal factor, then you would be able to see players still win games while rolling nothing but 1's and 2's, which we know is impossible. If the opposite were true, we'd be able to see less experienced players with worse lists occasionally wipe the floor with a more experienced player with a better list with nothing more than bad rolling on the better player's part or good rolling on the worse player's part - something which I've seen on many occasions. I've seen better players be able to win with worse luck, due to the marginal benefits of relatively playing smarter odds. Outside of this narrow, relative, marginal ability, however, the skill just doesn't matter due to it's inability to directly effect the outcome. If someone says that they're beating people who are just as skilled as them while suffering from terrible luck, it's because either their luck wasn't as bad as they say, or their opponent, however well they might play the game in general, played a really bad game.

People want to be proud of their work, and feel they deserve whatever goodness comes their way (like victory, for example), but combining emotion and a genetic predisposition against understanding randomness, and deciding that the outcome of a series of random events is somehow based on the kind of person you are, or on sheer force of will put into action... well... that's where things like conspiracy theories and religions come from...

Ailaros wrote:I mean, if skill were what was really important, and luck a minimal factor, then you would be able to see players still win games while rolling nothing but 1's and 2's, which we know is impossible.

Perhaps we are having a difference of opinion on what luck really means then. Because rolling only 1's or 2's the whole game is not just bad luck, its loaded dice. The point here is that you've chosen an outlier circumstance that has probably yet to happen in the history of 40k. If you change the scenario a little, and take a situation where one player has very poor luck yet still wins the game, you have a situation which occurs frequently. You chose the example you did as it made it impossible to win. Obviously even the most skilled player can not win in an impossible situation. Such a scenario is of no use and offers evidence of nothing other than that winning impossible scenarios is impossible.

Ailaros wrote:If the opposite were true, we'd be able to see less experienced players with worse lists occasionally wipe the floor with a more experienced player with a better list with nothing more than bad rolling on the better player's part or good rolling on the worse player's part - something which I've seen on many occasions

Your anecdotal evidence I find very questionable. Many occasions i'm going to call out as either blatantly false and misleading, or you've witnessed uncountable numbers of games and "many occasions" is more reflective of the number of games you have witnessed than an objective analysis.

If we want to use anecdotal evidence, then how does your theory explain my own person experience of not losing a single game of 40k over the course of an 6 month period (mid 2011)? Maybe there were 25ish games during that time, against LGS opponents. If luck was a significant factor, then I should not have been able to do so. Sure, some of those games were draws, but most of them were wins. Yet why did I not lose and instead draw games where I found my "luck" to be poor?

This is what Mannahanin has been getting at. A skilled player can mitigate the effects of poor luck while capitalizing on good luck.

Ailaros wrote:Resisting logical mistakes can't actually blow up your opponent's land raider, or guarantee you run 6" to make it onto an objective on time. Only the dice determine that. Skill allows you to make future decisions on a random element based on the outcomes of recent events (also determined by the random element), but it doesn't actually let you direct the outcome of the event.

If I am sufficiently skillful, I will rarely or never put myself into a situation where I need to make a 6 on a Run roll to make it onto an objective in time. If I exercise sufficient forethought and planning, I can put myself into a position where I don't need to Run at all or only need a single inch. Or I can consistently put myself into situations where 2" will do it, so I only lose in those games 1 time out of 6. Thus producing consistent winning results.

There are many players around the country and the world like this. There are many, many times more who are not very good at the game and consistently find themselves in situations where one or two die rolls appear to determine the outcome. Many of these players have a tendency to blame the dice rather than recognizing how they could have maneuvered to avoid gambling on those particular situations, and miss out on an opportunity to learn from the mistakes and improve their skills. Being able to analyze your own games and recognize errors in play, and learn from those errors, is how we improve as players. I do very well, consistently. If I were to assess myself on Schadenfreude's scale I'm most likely a Tier 2 player. I know and have met a substantial number of Tier 1 players but don't get to play them as often as I would like, which limits my ability to improve further.

Dracos wrote:Your anecdotal evidence I find very questionable.

Feel free to respond to the entire rest of what I've been saying, then, instead of just those couple of sentences.

Dracos wrote: rolling only 1's or 2's the whole game is not just bad luck, its loaded dice.
If we want to use anecdotal evidence, then how does your theory explain my own person experience of not losing a single game of 40k over the course of an 6 month period (mid 2011)? Maybe there were 25ish games during that time, against LGS opponents. If luck was a significant factor, then I should not have been able to do so.

Are you certain that you understand what "random" means?

Yes, the odds of getting a game with 1's and 2's are very, very low. If skill was what was important, though, and luck just an outlier, then a situation like even this rare one shouldn't much matter. If you're going to tell me that luck both doesn't matter, and that you need 4+'s to win games, then you're being incongruous.

Dracos wrote:This is what Mannahanin has been getting at. A skilled player can mitigate the effects of poor luck while capitalizing on good luck.

Yes, but HOW is skill doing the mitigating and exploiting?

It's doing it by choosing to roll dice in a different way.

Dracos wrote:how does your theory explain my own person experience of not losing a single game of 40k over the course of an 6 month period (mid 2011)? Maybe there were 25ish games during that time, against LGS opponents. If luck was a significant factor, then I should not have been able to do so. Sure, some of those games were draws, but most of them were wins. Yet why did I not lose and instead draw games where I found my "luck" to be poor?

Actually, I already addressed this:

Ailaros wrote:If someone says that they're beating people who are just as skilled as them while suffering from terrible luck, it's because either their luck wasn't as bad as they say, or their opponent, however well they might play the game in general, played a really bad game.

People want to be proud of their work, and feel they deserve whatever goodness comes their way (like victory, for example), but combining emotion and a genetic predisposition against understanding randomness, and deciding that the outcome of a series of random events is somehow based on the kind of person you are, or on sheer force of will put into action... well... that's where things like conspiracy theories and religions come from...

Yeah, I'm going to have fall in with Man here. Of the 10 tournament games I have lost this year I can point to almost every single mistake that cost me the game. None of them involve dice. 2 or 3 might involve me testing new armies out and the synergy not being there like but the majority of my few losses this year are due directly to my mistakes.

Personally I think 40k has to have a relatively high skill ceiling or more and more people that play so often at RTT's and GT's would be pushing at the top spots. That just doesn't seem to be happening.

Ailaros, you are accusing me of not understanding what random chance is, but you refuse to acknowledge the law of large numbers.

Sure, we are not playing infinite games, but you have to acknowledge that as the sample size of games grows, the ability for luck to influence it is diminished.

Saying that a game where someone rolls all 1s and 2s should be winnable is a very questionable path to take, but lets go there.

Due to the nature of KP, you can't win without rolling dice. Rolling 2s makes it possible to hit and wound in some situations, and therefore the game is not impossible to win. So given an equally incredible disparity in skill (and other factors), this luck gap can be overcome. In objective missions, you can win without even rolling dice. Therefore, speaking strictly in possibilities, given an equal disparity in skill one can still win objective games rolling only 1s or 2s.

I'll put money on the rarity of such games being, practically speaking, equal to zero. Its actually a waste of time and disingenuous to even bring that example up. But there you go, it is refuted.

You did not explain an individuals ability to win consistently, other than to say "you got luck". That seems to be your rebuttal to all evidence about skill. I will have to agree to disagree with you, as the overwhelming evidence does not support the assertions you are making.

edit: Lack of proofreading reads to typos.

I think I tried to explain this concept before in another thread. Anyways, 40k isn't as random as people say it is. Why? Because of the # of dice you roll. Think about shooting a lascannon..you roll to hit, then you roll armor pen, then the other person has cover, then you roll on a chart. You've rolled 4 times for one lascannon.

This is why I say that believing 40k is luck is mostly a fallacy...you generally roll so many dice during a game that you'll roll something within standard deviation of the average.

Don't believe me? Roll 6 dice 100 times. Your chances of rolling outside of standard deviation are so bad that you have a better chance of winning the lottery. Add up the total:
You'll get a number very close to 350.

If you roll 1 die, you have a 1 in 6 chance of rolling nothing but 1s.

If you roll 2 dice, you have a 1 in 36 chance of rolling nothing but 1s.

If you roll 3 dice, you have a 1 in 216 chance of rolling nothing but 1s.

If you roll 100 dice, you have a 1 in 6.533 * 10e77 of rolling nothing but 1s.
A 1 in
65300000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 chance.

It's official name:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers




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I'll elaborate a little more, since this concept is very important to the design of 40k strategy.

Resisting logical mistakes can't actually blow up your opponent's land raider, or guarantee you run 6" to make it onto an objective on time. Only the dice determine that. Skill allows you to make future decisions on a random element based on the outcomes of recent events (also determined by the random element), but it doesn't actually let you direct the outcome of the event.

You're talking about something here called the gambler's fallacy. If I roll a fair coin 9 times and it comes up heads 9 times, I am inclined to think that the 10th time will also come up heads. That is known as the gambler's fallacy, as the 10th time is still a 50% chance. But here, you're doing the reverse. You're talking about 40k skillwise as a whole, and then using dice as an example of luck. But here, instead of one die roll, it's actually very many. I see this reverse gambler's fallacy a lot...usually when people are trying to argue that armor saves are good in a situation between 2 guns..one which allows armor and the other which doesn't..but the probability winds up being exactly the same.

So why is this important to 40k? Well, it gives you an idea of what good army design is about, and why the builds that work are effective. Consider a case where your army consists of one land raider. Putting all your eggs in one basket increases your risk. You can mitigate that by diversifying..a concept that's used in finance today to create portfolios and lower variance. Think about meching up in razorbacks. You are doubling your diversity by both increasing the # of targets you have and increasing the # of similar long ranged shots you have.
This is why such builds have dominated 40k from the beginning.

Also...consider this...an army that has only 1 lascannon cannot completely destroy another mech army on the first turn. It only has one shot after all, so can at best kill only 1 vehicle. But what if you had 10 lascannon shots? 100? This changes the game, affects your deployment and how you might move, doesn't it?

That does say something about what the biggest factor in 40k really is...and I can say as a coniseur of crap that there are time I'm not happy about it.