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tldr: discussions in tactics forum are not about tactics in the word's sense, but only about putting units in front of each other and see how they fare in shooting each other to death.

Yes, the title is maybe a bit controversial. But I am getting more and more annoyed about the state of affairs in 40k tactics discussions. The reason is that if you go over most of the threads in the board most questions or problems degrade quickly in claims that some unit is not worth its points or overpowered and in the end everyone flames about Wave Serpents.

I do not want to discuss if these claims are justified or not. Instead I would like to point out what tactics are. A common definition is "the disposition and maneuver of units on a particular sea or battlefield". So why are we discussing point/shot ratios? My personal opinion is that in many tournaments the set up is resulting in bad games. I see multiple factors, but first of all it is terrain. I haven't been to that many tournaments, but in every single one I attended or watched it was bad and few terrain. So what if the currently claimed imbalance of the armies is only this way in bad terrain setups? People claim shooty armies are in a big advantage. I think Maelstrom missions already reduced the effectiveness of gunlines. Now, if you can place good terrain yourself you could break LOS and score without the gunline being able to hit you properly if they do not move.

So what am I aiming at? Shouldn't tactica discussions be rather "to avoid your problem you could place two big, LOS-breaking terrains and pick your units to make up for this". Suddenly Jump Units are much better for their points than when you compare them to "Everything shoots at each other from turn one" in which 10 Chaos Raptors are of course gakky and will be killed by a hail of shots in turn 1.

Yes, 7th edition does not include terrain placing rules. In most discussion threads this results in cursing towards GW and their gakky rules. But if you have a close look they say "Agree on something that you and your opponent think will result in the best game; we recommend using rather more terrain than less". So nothing hinders you and your local gaming group - or the tournament organizers - to have any terrain placement rules. We, locally, use the old placement rules from 5th/6th and add some restrictions like "each player has 4 small, 3 medium and 2 huge pieces of terrain to place".

I've read often "Ignore cover is so prevalent in current lists that terrain does not matter". That may be true for area terrain (which is removed in the old way in 7th by the way), but if you have no LoS you can't shoot a Wave Serpent shield. So here is my argument again: use big, LoS-breaking terrain and you will have a more interesting, balanced game that is less prone to dominant game mechanics like Ignore Cover or single units.

I hope this wasn't to erratic, I'd like to see your opinions on this. And I would hope to see more discussions like "I have problems with Imperial Knights." and the answer will be discussing possibilities of how to force shooting from different sides or exploit other weaknesses instead of just 20 posts whining about how IK broke the game.

Yeah, I can see serpents as OP.

It is a tactically shallow game. If you watch the best players you can see there are some interesting tricks to be learned. But these tend to be broad strokes. Not new unthought of ways of using units.

The skirmish nature at the core of the ruleset has been overwhelmed by the scale of the game and the extremely mobile withering long range firepower available now.

I do agree the game plays better with more terrain but it doesn't suddenly fix all the problems.

 Eldarain wrote:
It is a tactically shallow game. If you watch the best players you can see there are some interesting tricks to be learned. But these tend to be broad strokes. Not new unthought of ways of using units.

The skirmish nature at the core of the ruleset has been overwhelmed by the scale of the game and the extremely mobile withering long range firepower available now.

I do agree the game plays better with more terrain but it doesn't suddenly fix all the problems.

That's correct, but that's a thing that every game has, it's always a trade-off between complexity, realism and playability. But all that misses the point of my opening post. In a forum like this one you should take the rules and the gaming environment given. Discussions here always degrade to how it is the rule's fault and so on. However I like the game despite its shortcomings and would like to discuss possible tactics in the given scope/setting. However, that rarely seems to be possible. Is it this way with all gaming communities/forums or is it only a Dakka problem?

If you've played long enough, you'd see how the game went from a fairly shooting game, to a pure assault game, to a mixed game, and now to an almost entirely shooting game.
It's odd that the rule set took away a lot of flexibility in the armies. You used to be able to disembark and assault if the transport didn't move. You used to be able to consolidate into a new combat.
Removal of both of those rules took away a lot of tactical options, by virtue of not being allowed to do. It isn't a question anymore of if you should or shouldn't, you just can't.
Even during the hay-day of assaults, my shooting tau did fine by using lots of small spread out squads. Advance one to get in the way, spread out the rest to prevent consolidation into another.

It is the fault of the rules that the game is as tactically shallow as it is, because it didn't used to be that way.

And, wave serpents are totally broken.

If you want tactics, you're playing the wrong game. 40k is complex but shallow.

Q.E.D.

 Murenius wrote:
Q.E.D.

Q.E.D.?

This is why I am trying to quite WH40k, but apparently selling my army for less than half is still not good enough. Damn, why is my army worthless?

 Filch wrote:
This is why I am trying to quite WH40k, but apparently selling my army for less than half is still not good enough. Damn, why is my army worthless?

Because too many people are selling off their armies lately.

I truly believe that the best tactical discussion in 40K is in the battle report part of the site. You should try to write out a tactical discussion (we had a very similar thread where a person challenged people to do so a year ago). An indepth discussion and analysis of a simple problem such as drop podding on an ork green tide is about ~700 words of pure text. You can make diagrams but then you can no longer post easily on a chat board.

Thus most discussion is shallow and boils down to simple target selection and numerical analysis both of which are easy to present in text.

The battle report part of the site has a huge advantage in that they post pictures of games so as to give a thousand words with a single picture. Perhaps the tactics site could have people take pictures of situations where they were not sure what to do and then get advice (with a smart phone this is not difficult).


There is also the problem that people don't really have a good idea of the state of the game and have no idea what your meta is like. You constantly hear things like assault is dead and shooting is the only way to win. Which is why a unit like the imperial knight which is vastly better in CC than shooting was one of the most popular model in tournament play and numerous melee based armies make it to the final round . You will see many comments assuming that your opposition lists are all serpent spam and addy lance imperial knights with perhaps a necron airforce thrown in if you don't have enough AA (which for many players is just not true).

Many of these problems could be fixed with a proper OP for the thread with a diagram describing the problem and/or a list of the opponents they want to counteract. Instead the most common OP is "How do I use X unit?" or "Is X unit competitive?" these questions are either impossibly broad with millions of different situations and combinations or a yes/no answer. A better question would be;
What plan of action would you take against army list Y with my army list X on a board something like A playing mission B with deployment C? Which is subdivided into;
How would you deploy? (requires diagram/picture of board, mission, deployment type, and both army lists to answer)
What would be your general target priorities? (requires both army lists and at minimum mission and board picture/diagram)
Would you play to mission, table, or opponent strength reduction? and under what situations would you switch over? (requires diagram/picture of board, mission, deployment type, and both army lists to answer)

BTW
There are a few outliers like the waveserpent and some unbalanced combinations available that overload the game. However a lot of the balance issues are directly related to the level of creative freedom in the game and so "fixing" them will directly correlate with reduction of player freedom. Funny though how even a thread on trying to fix the problem of shallow discussion leading to GW balance discussion leading to waveserpent complaints still follows the pattern...

Also if your judge of tactical depth of a game is how often players come up with new moves and strategies then most of the old tactical/strategy games are shallow as you will be a celebrated chess champion if you actually come up with a new move, strategy, or combination (that or a cheater as you moved the night 5 spaces straight).

It's because 40k isn't a dynamic response game, it's a you go, wait, then you go.

Games that are more dynamic similar to you go i go , similar to chess have more tactical depth.

Actually Warhammer Fantasy for the longest time was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more tactical then 40k.

I don't know if that is still the case.

Another great tactical game was Epic.

I think this thread belongs to General Discussions =P

OP, I agree with a lot of what you are saying, particularly in regards to the assumption from many that whatever unit being discussed is being used in the open in front of a Tau gunline with 17 Riptides and an allied titan (obviously exaggeration, but you get the idea). But to sum up how I see tactics discussion, and how I tailor my response to them:

There are three broad types of question here, each of which needs a different type of response.

1) What is the best X (in/for Y)- this usually involves the assumption of a competitive meta, and often has a single, objective answer. For example, in the question 'what is the best Imperial Guard unit for tank killing in Elites', the answer is Scions. Ogryn are more suited to an anti-infantry role, as are Ratlings. The best weapon choice against tanks in a scion unit is a pair of melta guns. The best unit composition in role is a minimum unit, as you are relying on the first round of fire to damage tanks and the extra bodies as nothing to this potential.

As you can see, the answer is often cut and dried in these types of discussion, and point/damage/durability/opportunity analysis (ie Mathhammer) is generally a valid response, as it allows you to objectively pick the best option from the parameters given in the OP. The discussion here tends to be linked to the numbers, as the more 'tactical', as you define it, discussion comes in the second type of questions.

2) How do I use X?- this is the kind of discussion that does involve a lot more consideration of unit movements, supporting units, terrain allowances and the nature of the meta and opponent. Often, the OP is aware of the shortcomings, If any, of the unit in question, and is looking to mitigate them. For example, if the thread is titled ' how do I use IG Devil Dogs?', the answer is never 'use a vendetta'. The Vendetta may be an objectively superior unit, offering greater range, firepower, mobility, and durability to the Dog, as well as sharing the FOC slot and Anti-tank role of the Devil Dog, but that's not the question. Hence, the answer most useful to all concerned will involve how to mitigate the relative lack of Durability (for example, using multiple AV12 vehicles to provide armour saturation), how to best utilise it's weaponry (so a discussion on target priority) and how it complements an army composition ( by considering the role it performs and how this can support/be supported by the army as a whole).

So this is the kind of discussion you get at in the OP, where more parameters are in place rather than assumed and more than numbers are referred to (although there is obviously a place for maths, this is, after all, a game of numbers). Incidentally, it's the kind of thread I prefer, as there is a lot more room for thought, discussion and innovation.

3) How do I beat X?- this one is probably the most open and variable, as it can go from discussing singular units to combos and entire army compositions. Really, though, this is largely a combination of the other two but just wider in scope.



In short, the type of discussion the OP refers to can and does exist here, but at the same time, sometimes the 'fully competitive tournament meta best option only' mindset is the one that is relevant.

 MWHistorian wrote:
If you want tactics, you're playing the wrong game. 40k is complex but shallow.

This. Tactics in 40k are pretty much limited to "deliver unit X to its appropriate target, remove the target from the table" and "put units on objectives when objectives are scored". And usually those questions have very simple answers (drop pod melta vs. tanks, for example). So if you want to improve your chances of winning what you really want to be talking about is list optimization and ensuring that when you deliver unit X to its target you have the highest possible chance of killing it.

 Paradigm wrote:
For example, if the thread is titled ' how do I use IG Devil Dogs?', the answer is never 'use a vendetta'.

Strongly disagree with this. The words might be "how do I use unit X", but most of the time the question the person asking is really "I'm considering unit X, how do I win more games". And sometimes the answer is that unit X will never be able to win games as effectively as unit Y, so take unit Y instead. You can write as many words as you want about how to make unit X suck a bit less, but you aren't going to be providing anything useful with those words.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Paradigm wrote:
For example, if the thread is titled ' how do I use IG Devil Dogs?', the answer is never 'use a vendetta'.

Strongly disagree with this. The words might be "how do I use unit X", but most of the time the question the person asking is really "I'm considering unit X, how do I win more games". And sometimes the answer is that unit X will never be able to win games as effectively as unit Y, so take unit Y instead. You can write as many words as you want about how to make unit X suck a bit less, but you aren't going to be providing anything useful with those words.

If that is the question, then yes, you're right, but far more often, I see threads where someone is explicitly asking about unit X and gets told unit Y is better, which isn't helpful at all. If you can help someone enjoy a game more and win using a unit they like, that's better for all concerned than them winning only by using something they don't like as much, often at a financial cost as well. Even if X is worse than Y that doesn't immediately invalidate it, especially if the person asking doesn't have/want Y.

The OP's sentiments aren't new. "40K is a better game when people use cover" is more or less the consensus. I don't see how this thread is related to the tactics forum, though.

In any case. Yeah, matches are always better with more cover, and units like jump-units do in-fact seem to be built around using it.

In my experience though, throwing around LoS-blockers isn't as easy and well-accepted as asserted though. In my experience, putting down lots of terrain and LOS-blockers can be perceived as being almost as skeezy as modeling for advantage, or list-tailoring. Case in point:



This is a map that I played a 2v2 on awhile back. Throughout the course of the entire game, my two opponents were complaining about the map. Why? Because they were both playing gunlines. (Imperial Guard and Imperial Fists, specifically). Their units spent the entire game in their deployment zone, and eventually all died there, and the players felt that the map too greatly favored my fast-moving mono-khorne Daemons list, as all the terrain more or less prevented them from bringing the full force of their armies to bare on my units until around turn 3.

On the flip-side, I've played this same army before and gotten wrecked by an Eldar 'reaper heavy list because the map we played on had only a single piece of terrain outside of the our deployment zones, a little tower on the left hand side that was just big enough to hide a single unit of raptors if I clumped them all up. So, you have the opposite situation there.

I play almost exclusively pure-assault armies in a meta that's almost exclusively Necrons, Imperial Guard, Tau and Space Marines. So it's really not easy to advocate maps that are heavy in cover. We either play with cover-heavy maps, which pretty much benefits only me, or we play maps that are cover-scarce, which almost entirely benefits my opponent. It's never a good feeling to be in a situation where your opponent has a massively inherent advantage on you.

I forgot where I was going with this, so I'll just let it stop here for now.

As in all things in life: A good balance must be struck.

pm713 wrote:

 Murenius wrote:
Q.E.D.

Q.E.D.?

Quod Erat Demonstrandum or "That which was to be shown/proven"

It's used at the end of formal proofs (in mathematics and logic) to indicate that the solution is complete. It's really just an intelligent-sounding way of saying "we're done here."

Interestingly, the phrase comes originally from Greek, and the Latin equivalent uses a particular form of speech known as the "passive periphrastic," which expresses a kind of necessity to the translation: "that which had to be proven."

It's a nice little head nod to the strongly-held belief in the ancient world that knowledge and understanding were necessary advancements for humanity, even in the most mundane of situations.

That, or maybe they were just stroking their egos as much as they were stroking their beards. I always tended to lean towards the latter explanation...

DoW

 BlaxicanX wrote:
The OP's sentiments aren't new. "40K is a better game when people use cover" is more or less the consensus. I don't see how this thread is related to the tactics forum, though.

In any case. Yeah, matches are always better with more cover, and units like jump-units do in-fact seem to be built around using it.

In my experience though, throwing around LoS-blockers isn't as easy and well-accepted as asserted though. In my experience, putting down lots of terrain and LOS-blockers can be perceived as being almost as skeezy as modeling for advantage, or list-tailoring. Case in point:

Spoiler:

This is a map that I played a 2v2 on awhile back. Throughout the course of the entire game, my two opponents were complaining about the map. Why? Because they were both playing gunlines. (Imperial Guard and Imperial Fists, specifically). Their units spent the entire game in their deployment zone, and eventually all died there, and the players felt that the map too greatly favored my fast-moving mono-khorne Daemons list, as all the terrain more or less prevented them from bringing the full force of their armies to bare on my units until around turn 3.

On the flip-side, I've played this same army before and gotten wrecked by an Eldar 'reaper heavy list because the map we played on had only a single piece of terrain outside of the our deployment zones, a little tower on the left hand side that was just big enough to hide a single unit of raptors if I clumped them all up. So, you have the opposite situation there.

I play almost exclusively pure-assault armies in a meta that's almost exclusively Necrons, Imperial Guard, Tau and Space Marines. So it's really not easy to advocate maps that are heavy in cover. We either play with cover-heavy maps, which pretty much benefits only me, or we play maps that are cover-scarce, which almost entirely benefits my opponent. It's never a good feeling to be in a situation where your opponent has a massively inherent advantage on you.

I forgot where I was going with this, so I'll just let it stop here for now.

I'm sorry your opponents were bitching about the board...and got wrecked by a mono-Khorne list? That's beyond hysterical.

Tactics are tough to discuss, because they are situational by their definition.

"What should I do in this specific set of circumstances?"

The value of discussion degrades the further you get from those specific circumstances. It is much easier to talk about strategy, which has wider scope, and can be applied over a wider range of situations. 40k can be more tactical than people give it credit for, but that requires the player to explore strategies outside of kill them faster than they can kill me.

For example, Guard have units to tar pit death stars. I can say that by taking 30 Conscripts with a Priest or Commissar, for 115 ish points, can allow me to screw over a 400 point death star. They don't make their points back, they don't score an objective, and they don't contribute directly to my winning the game. But I can prevent those 400 points of opposing resources from destroying double their value of my resources, which is a viable strategy. At 1500 points, I have 1350 points of resources to deal with 1100 points of enemy resources... if I can accomplish the goal of letting my 3 point duders get smacked around by 45 point duders for 5 turns.

But what do I do with them if they don't have an enemy DS to deal with? Maybe they're playing MSU, and then what? Or what if I blow that death star up with a really lucky Demolisher before they can do anything? That's where tactics comes in. Maybe they can hold an objective? Maybe their lasguns can whittle away the last couple of Marines that are holding an objective. Maybe I throw them forward, hoping to draw fire from something else? Their tactical uses are difficult to discuss without context, though. I'm just imagining things they could be used for. It was mentioned above, that tactics "thoughts" are best put forward in a battle report...

"Top of turn 2: I could do Option A, or B, or C. Because of this, that, and the other thing, I'm going to go for option B, because *reasons* that seem more important than *reasons* for Option A or C."

People could then reply that they would have valued option A more highly, because the enemy is pulling a flanking move, or *reasons* for other things, which would be a tactical discussion. In a vacuum, that kind of talk is strategic, which is where the raw numbers and "This kills that before it kills me, so *win!*" I find discussion of strategy that isn't just "overwhelm them with this awesome unit" to be quite valuable, such as discussing the value of outflanking, or deep strike, or what-have-you that increases the value of a unit beyond what it can kill or survive.

The Q.E.D. - thanks for explaining, I was assuming it's common knowledge since we learned that in math in school - came from that I explained where I see a problem and quite some posters just confirmed exactly my assumption with their posts; without discussing it or shedding more light on it.

I do not agree on the theory that 40k is shallow and does not allow complex tactics. Have a look at chess. 2 identical fixed sets of figures, with identical abilities and a pretty small ruleset. Not to forget the 8x8 board. In 40k you have so many additional options, and I do not think anyone would consider chess to be shallow and unstrategic.

I agree on the arguments made towards map design. Still we locally have the experience that if you set up 1d3 pieces of terrain (of an equally distributed inventory) in turns few people will complain. Most rather tend to say "I set up badly, I got to consider this next time". It's sort of a mini game before the actual game.

Just saying "But tournaments are usually played with bad terrain or without much terrain" does not change the argument. It does not mean 40k is a bad game. It just means that tournaments have bad terrain use. Or phrased differently: is the current tournament meta this way only because of 7th edition rules or because of what 7th ed. rules do in context of traditional things practiced in tournament for years?

Maybe battle reports are rather the thing to check for discussions as I like them. Thanks for the hint, I'll put some more time in checking that subforum.

Murenius wrote:tldr: discussions in tactics forum are not about tactics in the word's sense, but only about putting units in front of each other and see how they fare in shooting each other to death.

Youtube is a better venue to describe those kinds of tactics. Forums tend to be a better venue for list building strategies.

Eldarain wrote:It is a tactically shallow game. If you watch the best players you can see there are some interesting tricks to be learned.

If this were true, then the same people would not be consistently winning GTs. They don't win these events because of their army lists -- other people are bringing the same lists. They win them because they have a deeper understanding of how the strategy game works.

The way I read lots of tactics is people basicly saying:
"I want to BUY A NEW UNIT -what should I get?"

Tactics here is lots about the hobby and how to build your army. People want their monies worth in this rather expencive hobby, so the main concern of the common poster is not in "how to place scenery", but rather in "how do I invest in my hobby".

Not all of the posts goes that way, but if they dont, you can be sure the majority feedback and responses is "buy x and y" even if the original questionere said he/she would not be buying anything new.

This forum is in many ways a consumer feedback forum.

 labmouse42 wrote:

Murenius wrote:tldr: discussions in tactics forum are not about tactics in the word's sense, but only about putting units in front of each other and see how they fare in shooting each other to death.

Youtube is a better venue to describe those kinds of tactics. Forums tend to be a better venue for list building strategies.

Eldarain wrote:It is a tactically shallow game. If you watch the best players you can see there are some interesting tricks to be learned.

If this were true, then the same people would not be consistently winning GTs. They don't win these events because of their army lists -- other people are bringing the same lists. They win them because they have a deeper understanding of how the strategy game works.

You do realize that GT winners are almost always fielding optimized net lists...right?

 Frankenberry wrote:
You do realize that GT winners are almost always fielding optimized net lists...right?

I think it's more that GT-winners decide what the optimized net-lists are

 HawaiiMatt wrote:
If you've played long enough, you'd see how the game went from a fairly shooting game, to a pure assault game, to a mixed game, and now to an almost entirely shooting game.
It's odd that the rule set took away a lot of flexibility in the armies. You used to be able to disembark and assault if the transport didn't move. You used to be able to consolidate into a new combat.
Removal of both of those rules took away a lot of tactical options, by virtue of not being allowed to do. It isn't a question anymore of if you should or shouldn't, you just can't.
Even during the hay-day of assaults, my shooting tau did fine by using lots of small spread out squads. Advance one to get in the way, spread out the rest to prevent consolidation into another.

It is the fault of the rules that the game is as tactically shallow as it is, because it didn't used to be that way.

And, wave serpents are totally broken.

This guy gets it. The game has swung from one drop of the pendulum to the other side..with each passing edition bringing then transition closer to where we are now. I feel like 5th was the sweet spot. Somewhere between rhino rush and the perpetual shooting phase that we are currently in.

 Murenius wrote:
The Q.E.D. - thanks for explaining, I was assuming it's common knowledge since we learned that in math in school - came from that I explained where I see a problem and quite some posters just confirmed exactly my assumption with their posts; without discussing it or shedding more light on it.

I do not agree on the theory that 40k is shallow and does not allow complex tactics. Have a look at chess. 2 identical fixed sets of figures, with identical abilities and a pretty small ruleset. Not to forget the 8x8 board. In 40k you have so many additional options, and I do not think anyone would consider chess to be shallow and unstrategic.

I agree on the arguments made towards map design. Still we locally have the experience that if you set up 1d3 pieces of terrain (of an equally distributed inventory) in turns few people will complain. Most rather tend to say "I set up badly, I got to consider this next time". It's sort of a mini game before the actual game.

Just saying "But tournaments are usually played with bad terrain or without much terrain" does not change the argument. It does not mean 40k is a bad game. It just means that tournaments have bad terrain use. Or phrased differently: is the current tournament meta this way only because of 7th edition rules or because of what 7th ed. rules do in context of traditional things practiced in tournament for years?

Maybe battle reports are rather the thing to check for discussions as I like them. Thanks for the hint, I'll put some more time in checking that subforum.

Your approaching it the wrong way, the reason chess has been around for so long and is by many considered a "perfect" game is the fact that it is completely and utterly balanced and relies solely on the skill and ability of the players.40k does not , by its inherent nature it is unbalanced. The game is a arbitrary set of rules, many of which do not work or can be misinterpreted. You cannot misinterpret the rules for chess.

Next, No one is on a equal footing regardless of point values.

Basically, the more unbalanced something is the less tactical depth it has.

Sure there are some tricks people pick up when playing, sling shotting special characters into combat, positioning, etc.. but all of these are just manipulation of the rules, not actual depth. Why?


Well a lot of it is the structure itself, first off it's random. Second, it has no internal balance, and 3rd the players do not start on equal footing.

Because of this it is impossible to "foresee " your actions, because those actions can fail due to dice rolls. That's why it's not a tactically sound game, but also what makes things in the game more powerful when there are no dice rolls to rely on.

Despite the lack of tactical depth, 40k does permit tactics that can be discussed. I've posted this exact same issue on this board before and received similar answers.

Dash used to write batreps with great tactical advice down to specific model placement during assaults. 5th edition was more tactically complex for that reason alone.

With assault heavy armies tactics are still important. For example yesterday I baited a large bike unit into a t1 charge against a large zombie unit rather than against the target they wanted to charge - a unit of Spawn (to prevent the spawn from charging them). By screening the spawn with the zombies they could function as an excellent counterassault element and ended up wiping the bikers over the next 2 turns.

Long story short, tactics are still alive and well the problem is that they pertain to individual matchups and don't generalize very well.

I'd like to contradict the claim that there are not much relevant choices in 40k. In fact I think that some of you just got used to those elements, not considering them conciously.

Deployment alone is an aspect of the game with which stand and fall whole games. Someone who is not aware of bubble wrapping might lose a game just due to positioning. Just had a game where placing in a corner and using cultists essentially robbed the GK player from high value targets. I used bought buildings to shape the battlefield in a way that my Eldar Jetbikes and Warp Spiders could pass and get back into cover while the enemy units could not.

If you have a situation where making a decision or not influences the game you cannot speak of a shallow game without choices.

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:
Despite the lack of tactical depth, 40k does permit tactics that can be discussed. I've posted this exact same issue on this board before and received similar answers.

Dash used to write batreps with great tactical advice down to specific model placement during assaults. 5th edition was more tactically complex for that reason alone.

With assault heavy armies tactics are still important. For example yesterday I baited a large bike unit into a t1 charge against a large zombie unit rather than against the target they wanted to charge - a unit of Spawn (to prevent the spawn from charging them). By screening the spawn with the zombies they could function as an excellent counterassault element and ended up wiping the bikers over the next 2 turns.

Long story short, tactics are still alive and well the problem is that they pertain to individual matchups and don't generalize very well.

True. But I think that the new edition just changed the situation, not ruined it or destroyed something. Due to the new challenge rules I noticed that you can use several assault tactics to influence combat results. If you think through the upcoming assault you can plan to challenge or not, place your units during the movement phase before the assault and by this control which units have base contact, can be hit/removed or not. Many people simply move their blob of models forward, not spending a thought on that.

Anyway, the problem is the same as always in the Internet since some years: people just want to get their existing opinions confirmed, not discuss things and find new ideas as a result...