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It seems no matter how "weak sauce" my army list was, when playing newish players steamrolling would occur. It wasn't fun for either player, but I found a solution!

Recently, my regular new opponents and I have been doing "Freaky Friday" games where they use my army and I use theirs. When they use my tournament lists and I build what I what I can out of their collection; the games are much, much closer and are a heck of a lot more fun.

For the first time in a long while, I felt the excitement of a real challenge! Still, I was winning, but the games were close enough that neither of us cared who won. That was the result I was looking for and wanted to share the results with any Semi-Pro types who are playing newer players and want the game to be close and fun.

#Make the game fun again!


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Of course, you'd only want to do this with opponents you'd trust to take care of your models.



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FYI, my tourney list:
100 Warboss w/ Powerclaw,Da Finkin' Cap, Bosspole
90 Warboss w/Powerclaw, Bosspole
143 (18) Boyz w/ Nob Powerclaw [Brown]
143 (18) Boyz w/ Nob Powerclaw [Red]
118 (18) Boyz w/ Nob [Blue]
118 (18) Boyz w/ Nob [Black]
172 (27) Boyz w/ Nob [Yellow]
195 (27) Boyz w/ Nob, Powerclaw [Green]
195 (15) Tankbustas
Blitz Brigade
115 Battle Wagon w/Reinforced Ram
115 Battle Wagon w/Reinforced Ram
115 Battle Wagon w/Reinforced Ram
115 Battle Wagon w/Reinforced Ram
115 Battle Wagon w/Reinforced Ram

I don't think I would enjoy playing with someone elses army as a new player, I would want to field the soldiers I had painted and nurtured, though I like youe out of the box thinking to make it more enjoyable for both of you

Perhaps just change your army around?

Skyfire on a Fusion Suit against an all-infantry army?
Take a full 10man with power weapon sarge, specialist, and heavy in a squad moving up the board?

Give your Dev sarges Veteran?

Take some Banshees? Assault Marines? Stealth Suits? Pulse Carbines?

Keep doing this until your games are a lot closer to 50/50, and voila.

Just keep your army glaringly generic.

No spam
No cheese tastic wombo combos
No Psychic powers
No Drop pods
etc etc etc

keep the game as generic as possible till they get the hang of it
Then add small things in till he actually gets it.

Nothing lamer than sitting there being told why half your army ignores half the rules in the game.


Edit: Also Lots of terrain and painted models gets them excited in there hobby spot. unless they are predisposed to just be heavy gamers.

As a newb myself I have to say: you do expect to get steamrolled. It's really just part of the learning process :-)

That being said though: it is helpful if opponents edit their lists to be a lot more generic against us newbs. When you are playing with x2 the dark vengence starter and someone shows up to play you with three landraiders...fun is not likely to be on the menu today...

I think it depends on the newb and what their goal is; if they want to play in a tournament it might be good for them to experience a stronger list once or twice.

For example, I played against someone on Saturday who fielded their LVO list, and they crushed me. However, I want to play in a tournament coming up, so it was a great learning experience. YMMV though.

 Desubot wrote:
Just keep your army glaringly generic.

No spam
No cheese tastic wombo combos
No Psychic powers
No Drop pods
etc etc etc

keep the game as generic as possible till they get the hang of it
Then add small things in till he actually gets it.

Nothing lamer than sitting there being told why half your army ignores half the rules in the game.

Wouldn't that be kind of hard to do with most armies. Nids and GK and most of all marines use ton of psychic powers. Same with eldar. Other armies have a ton of psychc like special rules. I mean it would be rather hard to make someone new play IG without knowing what order do.

Well let me rephrase that as try to play what they are playing.

Keeps the number of rules checking down and allows them to see how you do it.

(like if they are really into eldar for some reason having a psyker/walker/skimmer is no issue. but bringing a vendetta spam list with allied drop pods for melta vet action might be a little much. or the maxed out pink bubblegum summoning list is a little touch on the insane side eh?)

There really is two schools of thought. ether make em learn the hard way. or baby them in. i prefer the middle ground as i am both a fluff and a crunch player.

Give the noob a free 6? Just tell him he has one 6 he can use anytime before he rolls. That way he can kinda too luck in his favor to play against skill

Use terminators.

Anyone with any amount of experience knows when one list is flat out going to destroy another, so just don't do it -- keep it competitive. And then, help them out with the rules; stop them from making obvious mistakes, and tell them why.

It's much more fun to learn by explanation than to learn by losing!

Also, an easy alternative to keeping your army to something they can handle is to restrict yourself to the models in Dark Vengeance until they have some decent units When else are you gonna play Company Master Balthazar anyhow...

I recently played a game with a beginner and really the only thing that bogged us down was the constant rules explanations.

I think kill team may be an easier jump in than even just a 500 point game. At least with kill team I can more closely regulate what special rules come into play during a match, or even forgo them entirely. I mean, yeah you could play 500 points of Tactical Marines on both sides with no upgrades and a stock Captain, but what the heck for? Might be fun but as a learning tool, you ought to be learning the special rules at this stage.

Play CSM. Use a Khorne list with Berzerkers and Possessed. Put them in Rhinos, and upgrade both the Rhinos and their passengers as much as you can.

I don't mean total newbs, just people who can't seem to make a decent list to save their lives. People who can't mathhammer their way out of a paper bag.

I recently had the pleasure of playing a new player. I was actually his first game. He was working on deciding what army to collect so I let him use my Tau. I found it was a good game but I just handicapped myself about 175pts and gave him an aegis with quad gun for free... my nids ended up losing but it was a close game non the less

I was considering the OP's question myself earlier tonight. A FLGS's owner just got a Dark Vengeance set from GW and is planning on learning the game and possibly having dedicated game nights for some tabletop games. The issue is that I have always been a tournament player, and I don't want my (and other veterans') eagerness to play against starting players to kill their pursuit of the hobby.

What I was thinking was some sort of a 'Tier List'; not quite like Warmachine's but something along the lines of (keep in mind I play FE):
Tier 1:
Fish of Fury, TE Codex only, Pathfinders, Kroot
Tier 2:
Buffmander, FE Access
Tier 3:
Allies
Tier 4:
Riptides

The idea being something like holding the more tactically flexible (or broken) units back so that your opponents can get used to your force's composition and doesn't get overwhelmed by your A-Game. As your starting players get more built up, you could open up more access to your codex to give a more flexible game. If you want, you could frame such a thing as a sort of campaign, where you limit yourself to 1 HQ and one troop choice, and allow access to more units of the codex as your opponent expands his choices as well.

Your thoughts?

Just aim for a 60% win rate? Its really easy to slough points as Tau. More Pulse Carbine Fire Warriors and Stealth Teams!

I'd be willing to do the army swap thing.

As it is, I usually cut 5-20% of my points out without telling them. That way the game is closer, and I get experience playing at a disadvantage in the event something unforeseen happens in a competitive setting (like a DS mishap).

 Madness! wrote:
I don't mean total newbs, just people who can't seem to make a decent list to save their lives. People who can't mathhammer their way out of a paper bag.

Well if someone can't build a list themselfs it is not like it is impossible to check online what is good. Although I must say that in the case of some armies, one would have to realy show over the top "skill" to make and buy a bad army for some factions.

IMO the worse one can do is to give a false impression of what the game is like. A new player has to understand how much an army costs, and that there are armies that can turn the stuff he bought in to swiss cheese in one turn, given chance. You do funny stuff and suddenly he may think that playing DE without eldar ally is ok or that buying power armored GK was a good idea. And while some may think it is a good thing, because weaker armies equal more wins for good armies, from my expiriance people that find out that they bought 1500 random lists quit the game super fast.

Makumba wrote:

 Madness! wrote:
I don't mean total newbs, just people who can't seem to make a decent list to save their lives. People who can't mathhammer their way out of a paper bag.

Well if someone can't build a list themselfs it is not like it is impossible to check online what is good. Although I must say that in the case of some armies, one would have to realy show over the top "skill" to make and buy a bad army for some factions.

IMO the worse one can do is to give a false impression of what the game is like. A new player has to understand how much an army costs, and that there are armies that can turn the stuff he bought in to swiss cheese in one turn, given chance. You do funny stuff and suddenly he may think that playing DE without eldar ally is ok or that buying power armored GK was a good idea. And while some may think it is a good thing, because weaker armies equal more wins for good armies, from my expiriance people that find out that they bought 1500 random lists quit the game super fast.

A lot of people buy models because they're cool, and a lot of people don't understand the value of certain special abilities until they've seen it. How many people have terminators and dreadnoughts, and how often do they make their way to the tabletop? How useful are Rend, Concussive, Fleet and HoW? There's also the model issue, where someone just doesn't have their army finished. Those Centurions? Still on the sprue. Sicaran? Couple more weeks from the UK. And then, of course, there is Dark Vengeance. Awesome models, fair intro to the game, and guaranteed to be facerolled against pretty much anything of equivalent point value built out of any codex with the tiniest bit of experience.

I would rather play silly stupid lists with super ineffective models and units while coachin my newbie opponent through better units for their army. It can build for both players, giving me a chance to find new tactics or strategies and for them to get games and experience under their belt. Then when they are ready let em challenge me to a real list

... man I've been at it for 3 years now and this thread makes it sound like a minefield.

It's seriously not this hard, or at least not for me... but then again I've never played a tournament... I guess I'm just one of those guys with a random model collection and that realization sucks.

And now that I think about it all the stuff I want for my painstakingly painted but ultimately shoddy armies, its all the crap that 90% of the "Meta" says is garbage or tax...

This way the newer players also get to see for themselves why I say "use, this, not that" and what they could be facing in the long run; as well as how to use what they have well.

Well, I guess I'm an eternal newbie in a way. I've been playing 40k since 3rd ed. but I rarely manage to fit more than 12 games in a year. I usually finally have a firm grasp on the rules just before they change them, and I'm just a terrible tactician even with a good list taken from the interwebs.

I build concept lists around a piece of fluff I read, or to justify some concept modelling.

I understand that for a tournament level player, I'm a terrible player that offers no challenge. I'm pretty sure that if you stuck me in a paper bag and I had to mathhammer my way out if it, I wouldn't lol .

But here's the thing, I'm just as much part of the hobby as the tournament player, even if I'm not interested in ever playing in tournaments. (I've tried a few times, and just the pressure of having to play quickly made it completely unpleasant to me).
I'm not interested in leaving the dark reapers and swooping hawks on the shelf because they're not cost effective because those wings were a pain to paint and I'd like to put them on the table even though I have no clue what to do with them and they usually die like flies...

So any way the awesome players find to make a game more fun for both of us without telling me to buy more wave serpents and wraithknights and shelf everything else seems pretty awesome to me.

I really like the freaky friday idea. I rarely win because I'm terrible at strategy. Doesn't mean my beloved models can't get to win a game or two!



R.

I think your idea is a good one. It can help the new player learn about other armies and also see how their army can be played. Teaches them tactics.

Play a game this way then go and play a normal game. Let them really get the feel of how their chosen army can be used on the table top.

I kinda did this with a friend. He was struggling with his army (SW) so I asked if he wanted to swap and we did. I let him use my tau and I played the puppies. It was a good game, and I did win. It showed him how he could play his stuff more.

Depends on their goals. If they want a crash course in competitive gaming, they want you at the top of your game.

If they want to just throw dice and see their models doing fun stuff, throw in a bit of crazy, and make sure they'll have fun targets (Loves Berserkers? Bring some squishy short-range units for them to potentially mulch). Advising on tactics mid-game just hurts immersion.

If they want to learn on their own as they go, tone down your list a ton, but bust their chops hard once the dice start rolling. All your sloughing should be in list creation, not tactical decisions. But, in this case, show them what they did wrong with indignant lethality on the tabletop, not with words. Let them figure out that those Terminators aren't a great choice for trying to outshoot guardsmen. By killing them.

How you should 'play down', or even if you should, differs heavily based on what they are looking for. And isn't just for noobs. Some people just don't want as competative game, or just aren't learning/adapting so quickly. A little understanding goes a long way.

How to make playing newbies not suck: Teach them to be better players.

Voila, they are not newbies and you can have fun games against them!

I recently introduced 4 individuals to 40k and I tended to have bad cases of steamrolling them (with the exception of when I played as a Crowe purifier Wardknight army, that ended in a draw). My solution was first to switch from my Necron army to a Crimson Slaughter CSM army. I still was tabling them (though not as fast). So my second solution was to let them gang up on me, allowing them to bring more points to the table than I brought. They had a good time and I had a good time that way.