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Once I was having a HQ duel with 3 of my friends, I had Logan Grimnar, someone had Draigo, Someone had Mordrak and Ghost knights and someone had Sicarius. At the end of the game it came down to Draigo vs Logan. I shot my storm bolter and hit once, wouded and he failed his armour save! An unlucky thing that has happened to me was I charged my reavers into cover at 5 acolytes and he offered to just remove them but I told him that I didn't have grenades so he did his attacks, killed all but one then swept me!

CT GAMER wrote:This is the horrid byproduct and bastard child of mathhammer and power gaming and these types should be purges from the hobby with fire...

A good example of this is my Lascannon/autocannon preds. I run three of them. I know people who also run three of them, they won't shoot their Autocannons at all, not even against AV10 on the basis that it would be a waste of time.

To me it just seems, the more possibilities of at least shutting down shooting or movement is worth the time it takes to read the dice rolls.

Eidolon wrote:I get pissed off to no end when people start whining about dice turn 1. Not if they have had bad rolls for 2-3 turns straight, but that first krak missile shot misses, and its 'oh, great, bad dice, baaaaaaaw'.

Or that jerk who has lost to you 3-4 times in a row, and blames his statistically awful dice every single game for it.

I make a point of never speaking about failed saves. I'm incredibly lucky with 3++ invulns. So much so that I've forgone 2+ saves (in jest) to take the lucky 3++.

I have lsot to one opponent about six times. Truth be told, each time I did have one particularly bad roll that probably did me in. I always make a point of saying I lost and not saying "The dice were against me" because that lessens the opponents victory. It's a sore-loser's attitude.

I dont even know if thats true. If youve lost to him 6 times, its incredibly unlikely that a certain dice roll did you in. He probably wiffed some important rolls too.

My gk have lost 1 game, out of 20 in the last 5 months in tournaments. And, while there was a turn of pretty bad rolling on my part and hot on my opponents, I lost because I got overly aggressive with my terminators.

I think players should simply not worry about dice, groan about bad rolls when they happen and then forget it and move on. Because at the level of competition in 40k so many people make so many mistakes that you can almost always bounce back and win. So why worry about dice? Win with what you have control over, and learn every game.

I hate it when people quit on turn 1.

rockerbikie wrote:I hate it when people quit on turn 1.

I can kind of imagine that happening with Leafblower lists or just Dark Eldar in general... I actually saw one game of 5th Edition Dark Eldar vs. 3rd Edition Necrons where the DE player tabled the Necron player turn 1. His opening turn, he actually blew through 75% of the army and caused phase out.

I can kind of see someone deciding to concede the game if it's hopeless, but I always play out to the bitter end. It all depends on the player - I can think of two unique moments with almost the same situation, but totally different outcomes. In both games, it was 3e Necrons who got stomped (once against IG, and once against Space Wolves). Against IG, the IG player plopped down a battlecannon right on top of the sort of Necron doom bubble, a squad of Immortals with a res orb lord attached. He did enough wounds to force leadership, and then a Psyker Battle Squad leadership-nuked it to 2, causing the unit to run off the board. Similar situation, Wolves running Logan Grimnar and a bunch of Terminators charged a Land Raider up through the 3-Monolith blockade, charged into a similar squad (I believe it was Warriors, not Immortals, but they had a Lord attached) and knocked it down hard, causing the unit to run off the board.

In the first situation, the Necron player was annoyed, but kept going - and if I'm not mistaken, ground out a draw against the IG. The second situation, the Necron player, now with his only res orb out of commission (and Terminators all up in his bizness), ragequit the game. Never mind the three Monoliths that could have tossed out their shots at the clumped up Terminators, along with the other bajillion Warriors in range; he'd lost his HQ and a squad of guys on turn 2.

Eidolon wrote:

I think players should simply not worry about dice, groan about bad rolls when they happen and then forget it and move on.

I think this way too. As long as you always assume average (or slightly below average) dice from your shooting and assaults, you can concentrate on getting your tactics right and having some fun.

There will always be some extreme results from time to time...... My half dead squad of Dominions taking the last wound off a GUO in assault...... 12 Exorcist rockets hitting but failing to kill 2 Guardsmen in light cover..... This kind of gak will happen but you should never plan strategies based on hopeful dice-rolling

I don't like when people bin out of games on turn one, why even start and take the time to set up if you aren't gonna se it through? O.o

especailly when i'm not there til turn two lol

Nom

I have 100% respect for people who call a game early.

Playing the game til the bitter end is NOT sportsmanship.


I don't have time to play a game that is over by turn 3. I have a wife and kid, a job and many other hobbies along with real life issues to deal with. Playing another hour in a game when nothing will change the outcome is pointless. I would rather attempt to get another few rounds of a new game in.

Also I find games are being called more in 40k than ever before.

The odds of making a comeback in 40k are low, the game mechanics do not really allow for epic comebacks. You just grinded to pulp.

I have seen many WHFB games go to the bitter end since every dog has its day in that game. A unit of spearmen ACTUALLY can kill that dragon....

Milisim wrote:

The odds of making a comeback in 40k are low, the game mechanics do not really allow for epic comebacks. You just grinded to pulp.

While that is true the battles are either what you described or a tough fought. Depends on the skill level of player.

Skill of player has something to do with it...

the other thing no one mentions often enough though is,

My codex was written by Mat Ward.. I bet a Mat Ward List tables people more often by turn 3 than other codexes....


But this will just start a whole new fight... but it is a relevant point and one that should be looked into more often.

This is a game of chance for most armies... With Tau I have a 50% chance of hitting you. 66% of wounding you, and you get a 66% chance to block it.

When those %'s are 89% to hit, 89% to wound and 0% chance to defend.... that is a game mechanic that cannot be ignored.

Funnily enough, I have an example of 6 lasgun shots doing allot in a game against my friend who was playing my Guard only a few days ago. He was playing a killpoints game against my Chaos Daemons for a change, and he had been was losing pretty badly (mainly I had good luck with deep striking and saves).

He had a command squad in a Chimera and opened fire on a squad of 2 Flamers of Tzeentch. I was able to save all the wounds I received from the Chimeras weapons, so he goes to fire the lasguns from his transport (6 lasshots because of rapid fire). He gets 2 wounds and I go to save... and roll 2 2s . So he got a kill point out of a few lasgun shots. He still lost the game, though he did have a prety amazing last stand (we like to play to the annihilation of one army) of his CC who killed 2 Screemers (that killed his transport, and the rest of the squad in the explosion) after charging them and injured my Daemon Prince (and held out for 5 rounds of combat against him!)

Though it is not too shocking that I failed 2 4+ saves, you always have the chance that your opponent will fail their saves.

The thing too is that 40K has the potential to be over before the other guy even gets his turn... Weapon ranges, assaults on T1 etc are very common....

If turn 1 everyone was considered already MOVED for purposes of firing and Exiting a vehicle.... That would lessen the degree of T1 quits....

No shooting after a Drop Pod lands. etc....

I constantly yell at my friend to fire his drop pods storm bolters.

Sometimes it bites me in the rear.

They then end up glancing the rear armour of my tanks that his sternguard manage to miss entirely with. Result, destroyed battle cannon.

That'll learn me for encouraging my opponents!

I have had several opponents ask me why i bother shooting something, Math-hammering the chances of my doing anything to the target. by the end of the rolling, i often wind up causing significant damage.

For me, the worst is not the guy asking why bother, or the guy who concedes when he still has a chance, its the TFG who brow beats people who are conceding into continuing so that he can get a board wipe instead of just a victory.

Always make all your rolls. That's my game anyway. In Fantasy I play Orcs and Goblins and used to field lots of Night Goblins. So what if they're WS 2? Does that mean I'm not going to roll them because they are "unlikely" to hit? No way, actually whenever I down a tough enemy with Gobbos I can really laugh at my opponent (in a sportsmanlike way)

Milisim wrote: The odds of making a comeback in 40k are low, the game mechanics do not really allow for epic comebacks. You just grinded to pulp.

I respectfully disagree. It often can depend on the mission you're playing, but even after a bad T1 and T2, you can still force out a draw with good tactics. It just requires a rethinking of your gameplan. For example, if you no longer have the manpower to launch an assault on the objective, hang back and pepper it with shots. Heavy Support gone? Hug cover and attempt to distract enemy armour with cheap units. Lost a significant proportion of your force? Select your opponents most valuable units and hit them hard.

It would take a spectacularly poor performance on my part to call a game, and I'd only really consider doing so at the end of T4.

I don't hesitate to concede a game if there is literally no chance of winning. Such as a recent game where I still had about 60 gaunts on the table in an objective game. It was one objective to two, but my opponent had killed everything else except for those gaunts, who were about 5 1/2 feet away from the two objectives he held and it was the start of turn five. KP games the same way - if I'm down by so many points that tabling is my only hope for victory, and the rest of his army is physically impossible to reach and destroy even going to turn seven, I would rather start a new game.

On the other hand, I'm obstinate about not giving up if I'm still in a position to affect the outcome of the game. I'm not going to engage in any blather about 'dice gods favor long shots,' I'm just highly irritated by mopey defeatism. Considering that the game revolves around randomized outcomes, skipping some of those outcomes because you're in the middle of a snit-fit is irritating.

Milisim wrote:Skill of player has something to do with it...

the other thing no one mentions often enough though is,

My codex was written by Mat Ward.. I bet a Mat Ward List tables people more often by turn 3 than other codexes....


But this will just start a whole new fight... but it is a relevant point and one that should be looked into more often.

This is a game of chance for most armies... With Tau I have a 50% chance of hitting you. 66% of wounding you, and you get a 66% chance to block it.

When those %'s are 89% to hit, 89% to wound and 0% chance to defend.... that is a game mechanic that cannot be ignored.

What has an 89% chance to hit, and 89% chance to wound? And tau are one of the better armies out there, a lot of the current mech msu lists get destroyed by tau.

Milisim wrote:The thing too is that 40K has the potential to be over before the other guy even gets his turn... Weapon ranges, assaults on T1 etc are very common....

If turn 1 everyone was considered already MOVED for purposes of firing and Exiting a vehicle.... That would lessen the degree of T1 quits....

No shooting after a Drop Pod lands. etc....

I have seen 3 assaults on turn 1, two of which involved really really terrible placement in spearhead, like 'ill put my foot marines as close as possible to that raider full of thunderhammers as possible.' The 3rd was me baiting a dark eldar players wyches. As far as shooting I have seen it happen one time, against a guard army that managed some astoundingly good dice rolls. Any other time the game is over turn 1 due to shooting has been either poor list or terrible deployment, often both.

Im not going to bother addressing the silliness in those last 2 sentences

Scipio Africanus wrote:

CT GAMER wrote:This is the horrid byproduct and bastard child of mathhammer and power gaming and these types should be purges from the hobby with fire...

A good example of this is my Lascannon/autocannon preds. I run three of them. I know people who also run three of them, they won't shoot their Autocannons at all, not even against AV10 on the basis that it would be a waste of time.

To me it just seems, the more possibilities of at least shutting down shooting or movement is worth the time it takes to read the dice rolls.

Autocannon is strength 7 right? and fires 2 shots? So it has 2 50% chances to penetrate AV10 (assuming they hit). Who would ever think that that's a waste of time?

I've lost count of the number of times my Crisis suits with missile pods have popped a tank which my Broadside's Railguns totally failed to damage.

If I did mathhammer then I probably wouldn't have shot at an opponents Chaos Lord in terminator armour with my Fire Warriors. Mathhammering it says that 24 shots would result in 1.33 wounds. In the actual game his lord took 3 wounds, resulting in his death. And thanks to that bit of shooting my Eldar allies' Rangers survived for another turn.

Milisim wrote:The thing too is that 40K has the potential to be over before the other guy even gets his turn... Weapon ranges, assaults on T1 etc are very common....

Turn 1 assaults require some very specifically bad deployment by the person going second, in response to very specifically good placement by the person going first. It's not something that's common, unless it's a terrible player playing a very good player every time, and the terribple player is making the same mistake every game without learning.

Being annihilated turn 1 by an alpha strike is something that should not happen if you play with the recommended amount of terrain on the table. 25% of the table covered, with some large, LOS blocking peices in the center of the table, are enough to stop an alpha strike.

The only time I see turn one assaults is when the Landspeeder Storm pulls off the scout move 18", First turn assault. And then it's only scouts.

treadhead1944 wrote:The only time I see turn one assaults is when the Landspeeder Storm pulls off the scout move 18", First turn assault. And then it's only scouts.

Dark Eldar can do it with some amount of ease, too. Park Raiders on the deployment line sideways, turn 1 pivot, move 12", jump out 2" from the prow (which is really like 2.9 inches because the model just has to have one small part of it within 2") plus a d6 Fleet move and 6" assault. Assuming a 24" deployment line:

12" move, 3" disembark, d6" run, 6" charge = 21+d6 inches. Throw in an extra 2 or 3 from the pivoting trick and it's very easy to get over 24" of movement on turn 1.

Orks can do a long-range assault move too, but not on turn 1. Use Ghaz and his larger base in a Battlewagon with some Boyz. Pivot (I'll assume it gives an extra 3"), move 12", jump out the front end, 6" run from Ghaz's Waaagh!

12" move, 3-4" disembark (Ghaz's base is huge), 6" run automatically, 3" from the pivoting trick = 24 or so inches alone, and that's not factoring in the assault move (which is slowed by Ghaz's Mega Armor).

Plus, if I'm not mistaken, Grey Knights can use Grand Strategy to give something Scouts, which lets them throw any one of their numerous vehicles forward 12" before the game starts. And the two relevant ones (Land Raiders or Storm Ravens) are, in fact, assault vehicles.

I would not, however, say that T1 assaults are even remotely common. There are only two armies that could even remotely do it and still be a threat, if they're built right, and if the opponent is stupid enough to see a bunch of sideways tanks and put his forces directly on the line. A third one (Space Marines) can do it, but only with Scouts...who are Scouts.

Locclo wrote:

rockerbikie wrote:I hate it when people quit on turn 1.

I can kind of imagine that happening with Leafblower lists or just Dark Eldar in general... I actually saw one game of 5th Edition Dark Eldar vs. 3rd Edition Necrons where the DE player tabled the Necron player turn 1. His opening turn, he actually blew through 75% of the army and caused phase out.

I can kind of see someone deciding to concede the game if it's hopeless, but I always play out to the bitter end. It all depends on the player - I can think of two unique moments with almost the same situation, but totally different outcomes. In both games, it was 3e Necrons who got stomped (once against IG, and once against Space Wolves). Against IG, the IG player plopped down a battlecannon right on top of the sort of Necron doom bubble, a squad of Immortals with a res orb lord attached. He did enough wounds to force leadership, and then a Psyker Battle Squad leadership-nuked it to 2, causing the unit to run off the board. Similar situation, Wolves running Logan Grimnar and a bunch of Terminators charged a Land Raider up through the 3-Monolith blockade, charged into a similar squad (I believe it was Warriors, not Immortals, but they had a Lord attached) and knocked it down hard, causing the unit to run off the board.

In the first situation, the Necron player was annoyed, but kept going - and if I'm not mistaken, ground out a draw against the IG. The second situation, the Necron player, now with his only res orb out of commission (and Terminators all up in his bizness), ragequit the game. Never mind the three Monoliths that could have tossed out their shots at the clumped up Terminators, along with the other bajillion Warriors in range; he'd lost his HQ and a squad of guys on turn 2.

I can understand that. There are situations where it is unforigiveable though. For E.G. There is a Daemons player I know who runs a Khorne army and is risky with his deepstrike. If too many mishap he gives up.

It depends on the Situation, would it be better to run and not fire? Is it better to fire with a 1/32 chance of a kill, or a Run move with a 1/6 chance of moving 6"? Is it better to go to Ground and get out of the firing line? Or is this the last unit that can damage this enemy unit?

It's a tactical thing, you don't fire a 9mm at a tank, you could potentially (million to one, crack or spider the periscope or damage an aerial). So actually the odds of doing damage does feature, it's like firing at Eldar vehicles with Fortune cast on them or Holofields, statistically it's unlikely I will get it with a Krak Missile so would I be better firing a Frag into the Dire avengers by that building? At tournament level, the probabilities are everything.

It's all relative, people not shooting simply because their infantry is a bit rubbish, is odd though and i would recommend them to find a new Army or possibly a new hobby.

On the subject of quitting, I have often been in this position and it depends on the situation. If you have been killed by pure random luck it stings, like all your Space Marine Command Squad failing all their FNP roll and going down in one round etc, you kind of get the feeling it's not your day. We have all had those days, like when your Psyker falls to perils of the warp, or the vortex grenade falls on your own head, or the Manticore blasts a Stormeagle missile right in your deployment zone and half you army goes squish. I have been effectively tabled by turn 2, by a Space Marine Biker army, on dawn of war and as my Heavy's and other units came on, he rocked up and blasted them all. No point playing, I have 3 tactical marines one side, 2 the other and my Sternguard Drop-pod was killed by a bad round of firing followed by a Landraider with assault termies hoping out and slaughtering them. No point even fighting on with 5 marines against attack bikes, 2 biker squads, a Command Squad on bikes, a land raider and asault termies and a Pred. It really annoyed me that a player could do that, but his was an all or nothing army, if it hadn't been DOW my Heavy's would have ripped his bikes apart. So it's luck.

I wouldn't quit every game (that was 1 in 100 game) but I often set myself an "Honour Goal" e.g I might lose but I'll be damned if I let that thing that killed my Captain, live, or kill the Landraider, Character, defiler or Tyranid Monster that did me grevious damage. It's about Honour not about winning, and often it makes for more interesting battles as your Assault Squad does some crazy suicide assault (like a brood lord), and pulls it off. But then I'm quite tenacious and believe in the Maxim "Go down Swinging, screaming defiance in your enemies faces".

I have played through a few matches where I felt like throwing in the towel early on only to force a tie by making good use of my remaining forces.

Locclo wrote:Orks can do a long-range assault move too, but not on turn 1. Use Ghaz and his larger base in a Battlewagon with some Boyz. Pivot (I'll assume it gives an extra 3"), move 12", jump out the front end, 6" run from Ghaz's Waaagh!

Nah. The easier one is a Deffkoptas with a buzzsaw. Make your scout move (Turbo Boost) to 12" away, then move up on turn 1 and assault.

kronk wrote:

Locclo wrote:Orks can do a long-range assault move too, but not on turn 1. Use Ghaz and his larger base in a Battlewagon with some Boyz. Pivot (I'll assume it gives an extra 3"), move 12", jump out the front end, 6" run from Ghaz's Waaagh!

Nah. The easier one is a Deffkoptas with a buzzsaw. Make your scout move (Turbo Boost) to 12" away, then move up on turn 1 and assault.

Forgot about those, I suppose that works too. To be fair the only Ork player I've seen run them uses 3 1- or 2-man squads to harass enemies and get in their way while the horde moves up.