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To put it bluntly, I suck at playing wargames!

Painting and collecting has always been the main focus for me, with the social side of wargaming being a very close second.

Now, I'm not focusing on any particular game (I mostly play historical and sci-fi skirmish like Judge Dredd and Necromunda)

and the last thing I want to be is the WAAC guy,

but I wouldn't mind wining the odd game here and there, rather than getting beaten most of the time, and to be fair, my opponents are not WAAC people or tournament gamers either.

So yeah, any pointers to victory would be appreciated.

I'm focusing on two areas:

1. Start reading the rules properly. I've been overlooking this simple point for years

2. Try and not get distracted mid-way through a game.

So, again, any general hints or tips would be appreciated. What are the simple things I can do to hopefully improve my poor win ratio?

Thanks for any replies.

Practice and play more games.

There's very little in the way of written down guides, outside of netlists (which aren't that interesting anyway ), so you're going to need to just get that experience under your belt. Once you begin to play regularly, the rules questions will be smoothed out by experience, and you'll begin to understand your army and your opponent's army better as well.

That said, getting a firm grasp on the rules is a good start. I wouldn't try to go too hardcore into memorizing the rules, since that is just too much to process easily, but start with the rules most relevant to your army. Once those are locked in and you have some game experience, then spread your focus to what your opponents use.

Play more games and practice.
When you write your list, know what it does and how each piece interacts with every other piece. Don't just toss in stuff Willy nilly to see what fits. Make sure it is usable and useful.

 curran12 wrote:
Practice and play more games.

There's very little in the way of written down guides, outside of netlists (which aren't that interesting anyway ), so you're going to need to just get that experience under your belt. Once you begin to play regularly, the rules questions will be smoothed out by experience, and you'll begin to understand your army and your opponent's army better as well.

That said, getting a firm grasp on the rules is a good start. I wouldn't try to go too hardcore into memorizing the rules, since that is just too much to process easily, but start with the rules most relevant to your army. Once those are locked in and you have some game experience, then spread your focus to what your opponents use.

In previous editions of Warhammer, lone characters had 360 degree line of sight, so naturally, I thought this applied to monsters as well e.g bloodthrister

Was I wrong...

So yeah, reading the rules does help.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Play more games and practice.
When you write your list, know what it does and how each piece interacts with every other piece. Don't just toss in stuff Willy nilly to see what fits. Make sure it is usable and useful.

For a long time, I usually ran stuff I liked (miniature design, interesting background), even though its performance on the battlefield wasn't up to much.

Brettonian peasants and ratling snipers being prime examples of this.

So, for me, it's not quite that easy to select a solid force if the troops you can choose from are not that good in the first place.

Personally, it was easier to blame the GW game design for making these units under gunned in the first place.

Write a summary card for each unit, one at a time, with a beer between each.

Start with your HQ/Leader. Write down his (her?) stats and any special rules that apply. Then write down what that rule actually MEANS (+1S, reroll 1s, etc....)

When you've done, you should have a good understanding of what that model can do.

Celebrate with a beer.

Move on to the next unit.

Make no mistake, this will take time (hence the beer) but at the end of the process you'll know your army better.

Have fun!

We're talking cans of beer, not full pints, right?

Three things:

Know the rules. You don't have to study, but you can't choose the right option if you don't know what your options are.

Put things in your list for a reason. "It's awesome" is a valid reason, but take other things that can work with it then.

Have a plan. If you just bumble about the table with your army and/or only react to what your opponent is doing then you are not doing things that will win you the game.

 Mathieu Raymond wrote:
We're talking cans of beer, not full pints, right?

Is there another measure by which beer is sold? Here you buy either a pint or a keg.

 JamesY wrote:

 Mathieu Raymond wrote:
We're talking cans of beer, not full pints, right?

Is there another measure by which beer is sold? Here you buy either a pint or a keg.

Yards?

The biggest thing that I can say is plan in depth - how your maneuvers can be countered, and how you can counter the enemy's counter moves in turn.

I play KoW these days*, which is a bit more maneuvers based than WHFB has been for a while, and nothing much like AoS, at all at all.

But regardless of system, being in a position to counter attack will be important - heck, it is what chess is all about.

The Auld Grump

* Thank the gods for KoW - with the baby becoming suddenly mobile, the fast turn around on KoW games is the only thing that lets my good lady and I sneak in a quick game, now and again.

Better at playing or having better games?

Know the rules.

Know the math.

Be able to use the math to find prediction analysis on probabilities of actions and what should more than likely happen given any set of actions.

The more random a game, the less useful the math becomes, but the principals remain the same.

You should be able to look at any given combat or any given set of ranged attacks and know roughly by the numbers how many enemy should fall.

Thats what I did for years when I was a tournament player and it never steered me wrong.

Some of my general tips are:

As many have already said, know the rules. If you don't know you can do something or how to do something, you are talking tools out of your arsenal and can often give them to your opponent since you won't know they even exist.

Know your weaknesses as a player. I have always considered myself pretty weak at initial deployment from too many years of tabletop rpgs where you never had that chance. To combat that, I tend to stick with a Zulu chest, horns and loins strategy watching out for denied flanks which are a good counter.

Support your units. Think of it like chess. If you opponent attacks this unit, make sure they open themselves of to this unit of yours like a knight taking a pawn with another pawn ready to strike. Make the enemy have pay for their attacks.

Take actions that force your opponent's hand. This one isn't easy, but if you can take actions that force your opponent to react instead of act you basically know what they are doing and can plan accordingly. Just be careful to exert too much force which will leave your army/force crippled toward the end of the game. If you can't do this, give your opponent tough decisions to make.

Try to leave as little as possible to chance. This also means knowing you probabilities to accomplish things. I generally consider anything requiring a 50/50 chance or less an act of desperation or throw away roll. That doesn't mean I won't try, just that I should expect thing to my way then. Additionally, desperation isn't a bad thing. If you are falling behind, by all means, take riskier actions to catch back up. In nothing else, you might have a couple of cool stories of units doing heroic things in their darkest hour.

Think positively! I personally don't like this one as I am not generally a positive person. However, letting go on past bad dice rolls or failed tactics makes it much easier to focus on what is at hand. Too many times I have seen the players themselves lose morale in their army performing half-heated attacks doomed to fail in a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Much of the rest of my general tips are better covered by some of the posts above. I hope what I have can be of some help.

Another thing that helps you learn is to take some time immediately after the game and talk to your opponent. Get their point of view of what happened. See where you gave them opportunities, and where you denied them, and where you had them worried.

Most players worth playing will do this with you happily.

Honestly? Lose. And figure out WHY you lost; figure out what you did wrong. Talk with your opponent about it. Ask for tips and tricks for when facing those types of opposing units again. Most people like to either talk about their wins or help others for future games (the WAAC guys will float, but you can use that). Learn from your mistakes and take steps to counter it. Watch other people game and occasionally (very occasionally) ask questions. It'll help.

Two things:

1) Play lots of games. There's no substitute for experience.

2) Get rid of the idea of WAAC. Unless you're cheating/rules lawyering/etc then you aren't playing to win at all costs. Obsessing about whether your list is "too good" or "not honorable" or whatever is just a good way to lose. Play the best lists with the best tactics and win the game.

After you've built a decent list (if you're playing 40k, the game is mostly won or lost in the list building stage) slow down for a moment and think about WHY you lost each game.

Playing lots of games is great and all, but until you actually stop to think about WHY you're losing, you'll keep losing.

Games like 40k are largely about both knowing the ins and outs of your own army but also your opponents army. Making the right selections in your own army then knowing what in your army is good at killing what in your opponents army is most of the battle. Charging your elite unit in to the enemy's elite unit and losing because their elite unit is better than yours is a rookie mistake a lot of people make.

Focus your shooting and keep your main forces close together. If you split you forces too much they can be isolated and destroyed easily.

Other than knowing the rules I think one of the most important things is to actually think about the game afterwards. I'm not talking about writing a 30-page report on your performance but you should be thinking about what you did right and what you did wrong.

Look at how units performed and take the time to consider why they performed how they did. As a practical example take the situation below:

I saw a game recently where a player fired weapons at a vehicle that had little chance of actually doing damage. He seemed to bemoan his luck at not damaging the vehicle despite needing 5s or 6s just to glance with single-shot guns. A little post-game analysis would quickly show that it was the decision to target the vehicle in the first place that was wrong, not the unit's performance.

Set yourself an objective ( kill a model, claim a building, etc ) then set yourself another, complete that, then repeat.

Keep an eye on the victory conditions.

What do you need to do to win? What does your opponent need to do? Who’s winning at any given moment? How much more time do you have in the game to achieve your conditions?

Healthy diet and exercise, helps with everything.

 Nevelon wrote:
Keep an eye on the victory conditions.

What do you need to do to win? What does your opponent need to do? Who’s winning at any given moment? How much more time do you have in the game to achieve your conditions?

This is the big one for me. Give up on the need to table your opponent, and pick on the models/units you need to win points.

And, know your enemy. I usually just let the other side of the table fill up at the start, and hope nothing nasty is lurking amongst them. Find out what the bad guys can do to you.

Some good suggestions here

I'll try and take this advice on board and hopefully, win some more games.

I still have loaded dice in a box somewhere as a last resort

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:


I still have loaded dice in a box somewhere as a last resort

Just be sure to let your opponent know ahead of time so he can bring his jimmy-squishers. I mean steel toed boots.

End of the game, make time for a post-battle chat with your opponent.

You'll pick up good tips from that - unless of course your opponent is TFG. As 99.99999% of gamers aren't though, totes worth your time.

You may discover that at certain moments, you gave him Squeaky Bum Time - and with a little luck they'll give you food for thought on how to capitalise on such situations.

Why does this work? Only TFG is concerned solely with winning by the biggest possible margin in the shortest time possible time. The rest of us like to win, but enjoy a challenging opponent just as much - and if some post-battle coaching helps that, so much the better

Yeah; I've run across literally one person who was such an ass that he screamed at me for even asking what army he brought to the tournament (I was still in HS at the time) (Ironically, with all the talk of "Little Timmy", this guy's name WAS Tim!). That's the kind of guy you don't ask for tips if you play him. And I came across a single person at a free tournament with no prize money who felt the need to use loaded dice. Those are the people to avoid.
(DINLT, I know you were kidding bout the dice)
They're few and far between. I know plenty of people who will happily hand a player their ass, gift wrapped and all, but will go over every point in the game and show you where the mistakes were made and how to rectify it against any type of oppositional troop. These types of guys play hard, but they want a challenge; and they'll help you grow to BE that challenge.

Do not worry about it. Seriously.

I have yet to earn a lucrative high-paying job or land a date with a super model due to my win/loss ratio at toy soldiers.

I lose all the time. The question is, did I have fun chatting and talking smack with my friend? Did I enjoy the pageantry of it all? Did I uncover a fun little story/drama moment in the game? You get the idea.

To get better at playing war games:

You touched on that rather well: Know your rules.
Playing experience is the better way to know.
Read the books, highlight important areas, add tabs for key areas in the book.
Find rule summary "cheat sheets" to remember the "gotcha" easy to mess-up stuff.

If you know what impact certain rules have on your game you can better figure out: Know the odds.
Is a storm bolter better than a twin linked bolter? Why? Is higher toughness better than a higher armor save? That depends.

Once you have a handle of rules and odds you then can know: What units are worth their points?
You only have so many points to rub together so finding "bang for the buck" is a good start.

This is the hard part next, what buff or add-on "free(ish)" stuff can you get from a model or formation to make units or models worth even more? What buffs can you add for a more "effective" unit?

Knowing all this, what would you do to leverage those capabilities of those units for an overall strategy or plan? Are you fielding hordes? (you cannot possibly kill us all!), Are you fielding an "Alpha-strike"? (we will be all over you before you get a shot at us), Deathstars (so many ways to prevent being hurt than you can shake a stick at!).

Knowing the units selected, how do you deploy and maneuver them to be most effective? How to get melee units stuck-in without getting shot-up, shooty units not getting assaulted and get the objectives?

Know your enemy. This is the one area where research on the other armies is VERY helpful but can be expensive and hard to stay on top of. You really need to know what the capabilities of a unit is before you engage it: Is it better to shoot it? assault it? or avoid it? <edit>Forgot more importantly: target priority (it needs to die now!).

This is why for most games I like to be a "completionist" and have as many armies as I can so I can appreciate the whole game rather than a piece of it.
It sounds so focused on how to squeeze-out a win but there is a ton to leverage there for thematic play.
Remember that in a military setting, if it is a strategy that wins, it is most likely reflecting on reality: armies do not fight to lose.

<edit> This is all written with an eye on "follow the rules".
You and your opponent are agreeing to playing to published rules as written and any grey areas you wish to clarify/discuss.
It is meant to be a fun competition which has a large element of chance in it so many things will and shall go wrong so it is important to take the good and the bad with good grace.
It is meant for fun leisure right?

Streamline what you need to learn; focus on a single game (or 2) rather than jumping between half a dozen systems like we're all guity of, try and run a similar force with small changes whilst you're getting familiar with synergy and stuff.

Then just play more, try new approachs, see what happens. Ask your opponent questions "What does that do?" "Was that a bad move?" "what would you have done?"

Then just have fun. It's toy soldiers after all


Or just pic an army where you can still have fun losing