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So i need help with playing 40k.
Warning, im whining a bit or lot.
But since 8th edition the game of 40k has lost its fun. My army sucks and i lose a lot, i lost a lot in 7th but at least i had fun then.

Ive all but quit but really want to play. Im just overwhelmed with my constant losing games. I cant win and i lose by landslides in standard 2000pt/100pl games.

My typical list was

Spirit seer x2
Warlocks

2 wraithgaurd
1 wraithblades
2 wave serpents

3 wraithlords

1 wraithknight


My current list is out of desperation to just play but stressed by 8th's mechanics and rules

Spirit seers x2

3 wraithlords

3 wraithknights

Our tables have progressed and have much better terrain options for los blocking and covers, we have adopted a 50% obscurity for cover and have been using the +1 to roll off for initiative.

My games take too long half of my opponents play cut throat tournament list and the others just have all around better armies.

At 2000pts a turn can over 45 minutes on average the last three tournaments 6 out of 9 games we only finished 2 turns. With 2 hours for time limit and 30 minutes to finish current turn. I just cant take it. My fast games are against tournament player that play high quality list. We finish 5 to 6 turns in less than 2 hours and have a lot fun even though i take a landslide loss or get tabled, but when paying an entry fee to play in a 12 hour long tournament knowing im going to lose is too much when im too stressed to have fun.

And no one wants to play quick 500 point games which. Everyone wants to play massive armies and itc rules and kill or be killed list so im on the side with a bad list and not having fun.

Army:
Spirit seers x2

3 wraithlords

3 wraithknights

An Eldar army with only 8 models? Is this legal nowadays? Just asking out of curiosity.

I've not played at all in such a long time but from what I've read on these forums, things die a lot easier and quicker this edition and with so few models on the field, that could be why.

I would look into replacing some of the expensive stuff with some cheap infantry models to bulk up the size of your force.

All I can say is that the fun you'll have playing 40K is directly related to the people you play against.

No offense but it sounds like you may want to stop entering tournaments. If that's your only way of playing 40K it's probably not working for you. It's a game and hobby....you shouldn't be forcing yourself to play or forcing yourself to play in tournaments.

At a glance also...your list is terrible. Wraithknights are really, really bad. They're incredibly expensive and don't do much at all. Worse in almost every way than an equivalent Imperial Knight or super-heavy tank. It's about the furthest thing I can imagine from a competitive tournament list, and I don't even play tournaments.

It seems you're taking a sub-par list and forcing yourself into tournaments and then not having a good time.

Even I can see that you are missing vital troop choices to start with. Two or three squads of Dire Avengers and/or Guardians are needed just to be the boots on the ground. Wraith units are nice but they are too easy for the opponent to bring down with concentrated fire. More units that can hold objectives give them something else to focus on. Look at aspect warriors for the specific needs of your list that the other things don't cover.

Also, as Elbows says, find some local players who play the way you like to. Tournaments can be fun but they will bring out those players who have a better grasp of army composition and competitive play style. If that isn't you, you won't get an enjoyable game out of it.

Yes my 8 model list is doable in 2 detachments and bc if im gonna die i may as well use the models that got me into the game.

And my opponents are 95% of the time the same people ive played with since i started playing in 6th edition. Most other clubs that host 40k are over an hour away and gw is like 1.5 to 2 hours away.

I started 8th with

2x spirit seers

3x 10 gaurdians

3 wave serpents

3 wraithlords

I dont own bikes, reapers, hawks, or flyers.

I done a lot of list testing with the different gw eldar tanks and they all failed, walkers have never put out enough damage or my oppnent always had a list woth the opposite type of unit for the guns they had.

In the first weeks my best game was 1000 pts vs necrons, the game was neck and neck and i used

Spirit seer
Warlock
30 gaurdians
3 wraithlords (i love wraithlords)
Wriathblades

But this army cant scale up like other armies can.
Its sadening that i would have to give up playing with the people ive be friended just bc i enjoy a different playstyle.

Probably for a lot of the reasons that i dont play d&d with them, i tried and had to quit bc the way they played was to stressful. Ive already got a job for that.

Yeah, gotta say....at the end of the day it's a game. A hobby, and it sounds like netlisting/meta/tournament gaming is not the version you enjoy - no fault there, I can't stand it either. However, I would say if you can't find someone who enjoys playing at a more casual level - it may be time to sit it out for a while - or find more friends. There are lots of Facebook groups for every major metropolitan area with 40K groups, etc.

I will say, it sounds like you're forcing yourself to play in a setting you don't enjoy - then really compounding that by taking models because they look cool. You're just making a bad situation even worse. At the end of the day, a large part of this game is buying and building an army...so you can't hold other people responsible if you're trying to have a fun game with a very limited set of models. The game has never been balanced enough for that, and I've played on/off for over 20 years.

I've lost probably 70% of the games of 8th edition that I've played, but I've enjoyed almost every game - simply because I stick to playing with people who are on the same wavelength as me. In the local 40K group of Facebook, there are perhaps 20-30 people, and I game actively with about three of them. It is what it is.

You need your playstyle, your list, and your gaming group to match up to a reasonable degree to have fun. Otherwise, you either dominate or are dominated to the point of no fun. In your case, it seem you need either a different playgroup or a different list since they are meshing horribly.

hmm. Now, I only play a couple of wraithlords but so far they've done just fine for me, I know Wraithknights are supposedly not so hot anymore but there's certainly nothing wrong with wraithguard/wraithblades in serpents.

What are you struggling with list-wise? What are your opponents fielding? Are you finding you're getting bogged down by hordes, or just shot by lascannons?

Eldar have a really strong book. If you're getting trashed all the time that's on you. Your army selection is very poor - just because you can run 8 models doesn't mean you should. More to the point you have a bad attitude - it seems like you're giving up before you even get to the table.

I'd recommend that rather than trying to force yourself to play, you need to take some time off. Go and do something else with your time.

vaurapung wrote:
Yes my 8 model list is doable in 2 detachments and bc if im gonna die i may as well use the models that got me into the game.

Well, you die because of that list. No one can win with wraithknights against a tournament list. If you want to win, bring a stronger list.

vaurapung wrote:


In the first weeks my best game was 1000 pts vs necrons, the game was neck and neck and i used

This is probably not much help, but this about the size of game I like - definitely not stretching past 1250. At this points level, the game doesn't feel like it drags and units seem to get a couple punches in before they get decimated.

change list man...what's the problem? 7th was horrible, why you keep on playing your old list...drop the wraithknight and start playing real eldar, we have a good codex and the army is super fun. psyckers, guardians, some skimmers you will be ok as iyanden I guess

Whatever list you make will eventually get "broken" by GW. It is the way of 40k.

This same situation has killed off many many players over the years. GW doesnt want you to play 40k unless you are buying new stuff every week.

Once you figure that out , everything falls into place!

Ive only ran my 3 knight list for 6 games now, two casual and one 3 round tourny at the club me and my friends run.

I built the list because i was tired and i didnt want to move a bunch of models around.

The list ive used for most of 8th is
Core
Spirit seer and 30 gaurdians,
Elites
Wraith Gaurd and or blades,
Some serpents to carry the gaurd or gaurdians,
Some wraithlords to walk up the feild and make a bee line for the opponents biggest tank usually with the blades and a spirit seer on their tails.

What i see when i play is that i can unload all of my shooting

15 shurican cannons on turns one and nothing dies. By turn two i have a dead lord, a dead serpent and guradians running for their lives. Turn three i may wreck and land raider, triach stalker or imperial knight with 2 lords and my blades but the counter swing of the terminators or thunder calvery sets in stone my demise. My gaudians are gone my wave serpents can move but their 9 shots each just are useless. And turn 4 im near tabled. Every game and every opponent at 2000pts.

At 500 i can take auserman and 15 dire avenger and warlock. They took on bjorn felhand and a predator with blood claws. That was an amazing game watching auserman stand up to felhand and nearly bully him down.

Im always outgunned and outranged by every other army.

I dont own flyers and dark reapers or bikes. Just units thant dont fit my army aesthetic (i want the hemlock but it just keeps going up in price way too much, ive only spent 150 to have my 4 knights mostly second hand)

So when 8th dropped these new play formats showed up and i still havent been able to wrap my head around open and narrative. What are they and could they help. To me matched play is suppose to allow each player to build equal armies by using point effectivness. Well some models are obviously too cheap for what they can do so im always weaker because i dont use my codexs bang for point models.

That might be true, some of it is the combination of units you take. That said it seems like you are using lots of wraith units. Have you looked at using webway portals to deploy wraith guard or blades? What cratworld trait are you using? Are you using guardians to bubble wrap stuff early to prevent deepstrike? Can you make a unit to make use of forewarning. The game is not built in a way where any given equal points of units is equal to any other. Points (in theory) represent a unit's effectiveness at its role. If you have only one role covered then you won't do well.

vaurapung wrote:
So when 8th dropped these new play formats showed up and i still havent been able to wrap my head around open and narrative. What are they and could they help.

Yes they could help, but the most important thing to remember when playing open and narrative is to play to see what happens and that sometimes the story will be one of your army getting wiped out.

If I were to summarize the ideal of open play it would be to play for the experience of playing rather than winning in an arena. It's about doing whatever and being okay with whatever happening happening. In the main rulebook there are some scenarios that assume drastically different army sizes, for example. That's something a tournament player might think is unfair-- shouldn't our armies be equal?

Narrative is about story. Both in the setup and in the actual game. It can be about recreating a scene from a movie but in the 40k universe, or a battle from a 40k novel or whatever. It often includes rules for the setting itself. Things that evoke the idea of what is going on.

My favorite way to play is small games using the Open War cards, but I love all the scenarios in all the modes of play as well.

The main failing point for Open and Narrative play is that you need like minded individuals. if someone simply can't get on the same page as you and has to take the most powerful thing possible, they're simply never going to be a suitable Open or Narrative opponent unless you are willing to do the same. This is no different than matched play.

To me matched play is suppose to allow each player to build equal armies by using point effectivness. Well some models are obviously too cheap for what they can do so im always weaker because i dont use my codexs bang for point models.

We use points for our narrative and open play games but we do recognize that they are a guideline. In order for them to work as a means of creating a fair and equal test of skill, there's a lot of assumptions that need to be made in advance and most people aren't willing to make them. If you're not willing to use the best bang for points entries in your codex, then you're simply not ever going to have a fair and equal game against someone who does.

I think this idea that points systems can somehow create fair games is unrealistic. An anti-tank weapon is the same points whether the opponent takes a few hard targets or takes a bunch of barely trained infantry with no upgrades. Points systems simply will never take into consideration the army composition of the opponent except in very general ways. This actually creates an opportunity for a particular type of player. Some find it absolutely loads of fun to figure out the best way to take advantage of the current tendencies in what people take in their armies. If points actually worked and somehow took everything into consideration that needed to be taken in for a game to be actually fair and equal, the whole fun of list building and responding to a shifty tournament meta would be denied to those who enjoy such things.

The key is to find like minded players. And you might find that loads of people who are currently doing a tournament approach may not actually have that as their favorite approach but that's just what has worked out for them in terms of when and where they play.