Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Skill exists, but isn't nearly as important as it should be.

If my opponent rolls invisibility I know I have lost.

And yeah Purge the Alien / Kill points is kinda lame imho. Pretty obvious the guy with 4 Imperial knights will beat a normal 1500 tac list.

Verviedi wrote:
At my FLGS, when people who are new come in, the manager usually shows off a model that is not competitively viable such as a Morkanaught, and explains that the "Internet hates this model, and they call it useless and terrible, but since the game is tactical, if you know how to use it, it's one of the best units."

This brought up a question. Is this true? Is it actually possible to compensate for crappiness by using a model with skill?

Thats just a sales tactic. When i first started out, I was dooped into buying a terminator lord, then khorne berserkers as troops, latter I needed something that did not die easy so over priced metal plague marines, they still died in combat from witches so he suggested thousand sons, then vindicator, then havoc box etc...Every time when I asked him for advice he would sell me stuff that needed to be moved.

skill exists and in the case of the gorkanaut, it's important. it's a huge target and it's slow (like every walker). the naut excells when in a good position , but in bad position, it's useless or gets plasma'd.
but codex strength, dice luck, list making,... can make a huge difference too.

 Azreal13 wrote:
Experience and knowledge do not equal skill. It is easy to conflate them with each other, but they are not the same.

I could have been playing tennis for 20 years, I could understand the rules intimately, I could have a huge repertoire of practiced shots and sequences that have won me many points in the past, it does not necessarily follow that I will ever be good enough to be, or even beat, a player in the top 100.

I'm really curious as to what is considered "skill" now.

I've exhausted what I consider factors to be involved with skill but apparently those don't matter? I'm looking for other people's definitions at this point.

If outthinking your opponent and ability to read and predict a battle with some degree of success by already doing the math in one's head for luck statics is not skill; I really wonder what is then.

Even in your example, that top pro guy practices just as much if not more. He's not going to be some noob out of the box and get to the top 100 of tennis. That only happens in anime and movies and even then, you still always get some sort of training montage to prove that he's not just lucking it out each time. I guarantee you that all the top pro players practice literally hundreds if not thousands of hours to get to where they are at. Experience / muscle memory. They are building those things along with any physical conditioning.

They've done plenty of human testing and have proven that a learned memory response can always be faster than a reflex response. You are literally building shortcuts in your brain with neurons to achieve a faster reaction speed and "skill" in my opinion. To process a novel new scenario each time will take precious seconds that you may not have. While we're playing a much slower game, it doesn't take the predictive ability away. That's how chess champions work. They have seen that scenario before and know how to manipulate it into a win. That's experience that looks like skill to me. I don't see the distinction actually.

If my opponent rolls invisibility I know I have lost.

And yeah Purge the Alien / Kill points is kinda lame imho. Pretty obvious the guy with 4 Imperial knights will beat a normal 1500 tac list.

That's purely a psychological barrier I assure you. I've seen plenty of invisibility lists and some that even build towards that *loth/belcor * etc lose.
I've also seen 4 imperial knights lose to MSU before too. It's not impossible. heck, we got lots of battle reports on dakka here that shows exactly those things.

 scommy wrote:
If my opponent rolls invisibility I know I have lost.

And yeah Purge the Alien / Kill points is kinda lame imho. Pretty obvious the guy with 4 Imperial knights will beat a normal 1500 tac list.

This is the divide between an average gamer and successful competitive players. The later wouldn't even flinch. If you're not ready to handle invis/Super hvy, then I wouldn't entertain myself of doing well in comp play.

 sudojoe wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
Experience and knowledge do not equal skill. It is easy to conflate them with each other, but they are not the same.

I could have been playing tennis for 20 years, I could understand the rules intimately, I could have a huge repertoire of practiced shots and sequences that have won me many points in the past, it does not necessarily follow that I will ever be good enough to be, or even beat, a player in the top 100.

I'm really curious as to what is considered "skill" now.

Well admittedly it can be somewhat of a moving target to define, with many synonyms and may vary slightly depending on context and author, but in this context I'm taking it to mean an innate ability to be good at something.

This ability can be improved by practice and experience, a lack of this ability can be compensated for to some extent by the same, but ultimately, assuming approximate parity in both these factors, a more skilled person in a given thing will generally come out on top. Skill is the inherent ceiling in how good you can be at a thing, regardless of how hard you try.

 Nyghoma wrote:

 scommy wrote:
If my opponent rolls invisibility I know I have lost.

And yeah Purge the Alien / Kill points is kinda lame imho. Pretty obvious the guy with 4 Imperial knights will beat a normal 1500 tac list.

This is the divide between an average gamer and successful competitive players. The later wouldn't even flinch. If you're not ready to handle invis/Super hvy, then I wouldn't entertain myself of doing well in comp play.

If your opponent has a list of equal caliber and you are evenly matched players, I doubt you will beat him if he has invisibility - barring some lucky dice rolls.

As for Purge the Alien, a typical 1500 points list will have maybe 6 -8 units - mathematically its hard to beat a decent opponent who has only 4 tough units - unless you table him.

As for you never having lost... what about when you were starting out as a brand new player? Never lost then?

Are you guys considering how people roll the dice to get the high or low when needed as skill?