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How do i go about this? Is there a certain ways of doing it?
Any help dakka would be most appreciated.

Hmm, 40k is not a solitaire game.
The opponent wants to stab you in the back, or go for your throat.

Kinda hard to do because sub consciously youll be rootng for one side and nott be as cut throat as the other.
I used to do this a lot until i figured out i had more fun playing with others and with less effort on my part.

My only recommendation would be to keep the games relatively small (1250) but thats just me.
Otherwise....just play.

The great army of grey plastic is the only solo opponent that 40k has to offer.

You'll go blind if you play with yourself.

Bring an ultra competitive list to a casual game. That should increase your chances for playing alone.

There isn't really anything you have to or can do. Just play the game as is playing both sides. The problem you'll encounter is that because you control both sides you'll already know what your opponent is thinking so trying to setup a trap or surprise or lead them into a blind corner won't work unless you do so deliberately.

Otherwise its just playing pew-pew toy soldiers with some rules; nothing wrong in that one bit, but it won't be the same experience as playing against a person and you won't be able to simulate that either


I'm sure some people might have tried ot build random movement and attack engines to try and build an AI to play against (ergo one faction you move and control; the other you roll a dice for the choices to be made for each unit). Though I've no idea if anyone has done this with any serious thought or even if its practical for a complicated game (even pc game AI are mostly just charge the closest thing)

The only way to do it is to set up a list of rules for how your opponent will behave. You could write a set of behaviour rules based on target priority and target type. Similar to this for automated artillery like the Tarantula or Tyranid instinctive behaviour.

This might be most appropriate for playing against a horde of nids, but possibly for an ork horde or waves of guardsmen.

Instead of playing equal points, make your challenge to see how many points you can kill before your own guys are all dead.

Can also setup two gunlines and roll dice untill one side runs out of models before the other side. Seems to be the popular way to play these days.

Why do you want to play alone? No one in your area to play with?
If that's the case, try playing WH40k via Tabletop Simulator or Vassal.

Otherwise the best way to play solo would be thinking up a "Goldfish" - a fixed set of actions your opponent would always do, without any decisions to be made. A very simple one would look like this (for an ork army):
- Move all units as fast as possible towards the closest unit. Advance all units that do not have any weapons in range to shoot otherwise.
- All warpheads smite in the psyhic phase
- All units which do more than 1 damage try to shoot the closest multi-wound model. All other units shoot the closest model
- All units within 10" of a unit try to assault it.
- Units activate to fight from left to right

Obviously, this will never match a real human opponent, and can easily be tricked into doing terrible mistakes. Giving the goldfish more points might or might not compensate for that.

hobojebus wrote:
You'll go blind if you play with yourself.

I don't speak British. Is this what people mean when they say fapping?

Without a lot of work there will be no good satisfying way to play 40K solo.

At the bare minimum you'll want unit activation based on playing cards, etc. Then as you draw a unit's card you activate it and do whatever is in its best interest. It still is not a game very suitable (at all) to solo play, outside of testing unit dice rolls, etc.

Maybe consider NPC-like AI rules that the opposing army must follow that you set out before the game. Like - always shoot the weakest models within range, or Cultists must try to claim objectives.

Cloning.

 Fifty wrote:
The only way to do it is to set up a list of rules for how your opponent will behave. You could write a set of behaviour rules based on target priority and target type. Similar to this for automated artillery like the Tarantula or Tyranid instinctive behaviour.

This might be most appropriate for playing against a horde of nids, but possibly for an ork horde or waves of guardsmen.

Instead of playing equal points, make your challenge to see how many points you can kill before your own guys are all dead.

This would totally be the way to go about it. Set rules for one side in an imbalanced narrative sort of scenario.

Other then creating rules for how your opponent would behave I think the only way to do it would be to set up a thematic game. Give each unit an objective and secondary and deploy to follow a theme. The army then tries to carry out the objective the best way you know how. Essentially your setting both up on the field with a general idea of what they will do and then seeing if the dice allow them to complete it or not

It would be a dice roll game, but if you design movement for some NPC units, you can make something work.

Like, an advancing horde of Orkz/Tyranids.

Or storming a Bunkwr or something.

The Dark Vengeance starter used to have some missions for beginners to play solo that showed basic designs like shooting, movement etc. One scenario had your Chosen Marines try to disable a rampaging Helbrute.

 Overread wrote:
There isn't really anything you have to or can do. Just play the game as is playing both sides. The problem you'll encounter is that because you control both sides you'll already know what your opponent is thinking so trying to setup a trap or surprise or lead them into a blind corner won't work unless you do so deliberately.

Well with 40k being mostly decided in list building stage there's not much traps or surprises you CAN do even with other human as opponent. Unless we are talking about surprising somebody with rule he or she has never heard before(like da jump ability to deep strike and charge or ultramarines can fall back and shoot) but I don't consider those as particularly interesting surprises and certainly not tactical at all. Just annoying side effect of too many factions to know rules fully(back in 3rd edition codexes were so cheap I basically owned them all. These days not as viable. Especially as not only price has gone up so has count)


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Jidmah wrote:
Why do you want to play alone? No one in your area to play with?
If that's the case, try playing WH40k via Tabletop Simulator or Vassal.

Otherwise the best way to play solo would be thinking up a "Goldfish" - a fixed set of actions your opponent would always do, without any decisions to be made. A very simple one would look like this (for an ork army):
- Move all units as fast as possible towards the closest unit. Advance all units that do not have any weapons in range to shoot otherwise.
- All warpheads smite in the psyhic phase
- All units which do more than 1 damage try to shoot the closest multi-wound model. All other units shoot the closest model
- All units within 10" of a unit try to assault it.
- Units activate to fight from left to right

Obviously, this will never match a real human opponent, and can easily be tricked into doing terrible mistakes. Giving the goldfish more points might or might not compensate for that.

That would(IMO) be way more boring than trying to think how to play for both armies. This is going to result in super exploitable games where you can game the stupid AI. At least playing without AI allows game to mimic better real opponent.

Heard someone playing against himself with like tower defense, with scaling waves of enemies, so like one zombie, then two, then three etc, perhaps each completed wave gives you alittle bit of points so you can call in for heavy support when you reach wave 128 or something...

I'll just copypaste myself from parallel thread on the same topic:

Playing solo is pretty much the same as playing in "semi co-op" way when you set your goal to "find the best solution". It's quite fun on it's own and playing Maelstrom or custom asymetric scenarios keep such games from being too easily solvable (matched style Eternal War is pretty much the worst for solo play as it is just a dice rolling fest as everything else is ultimately solvable at listbuilding or deployment stages). Focus on themed lists for both sides and then work with whatever is on the table to achieve tasks at hand in the most optimal manner you can think of - this way even playing solo actually improves your skill in normal conditions and provide intelectual challenges that still yeld spectacular narrative moments. And most definitely use a lot more terrain than in a typical matched play batrep - you cannot outsmart/trick yourself so instead of easy setups that depend on limited knowledge of what enemy is going to do next, go with difficult setups that push you on the very limits of what you can predict about outcome of your actions. Try to unfold the story from what is embedded within terrain/mission/lists/ruleset combo rather than execute a pre-planned one.

Become a powergamer.

tneva82 wrote:


That would(IMO) be way more boring than trying to think how to play for both armies. This is going to result in super exploitable games where you can game the stupid AI. At least playing without AI allows game to mimic better real opponent.

Not necessarily.

If you got some rules set up on how to randomize the "AI"s deployment, or even better thier list, you won't know exactly what you are up against and will have to adapt a bit.

Also, you can do what every computer game does to make AI opponents challenging, let it cheat. Give it more points than you to compensate for its stupidity and predictability.
Even against dumb AI, it won't be easy to beat a horde of 3000 points of nids who got a random unit composition and a random deployment setup with your meager 1500 points of marines.

I suppose you could introduce rules for an "AI" opponent, but you'll likely make the game convoluted and impractical with little to gain from it. Even most board games, which is a format which lends itself better to this sort of thing, fail to deliver what a game with 1 (or more) opponents would be like. The whole point of miniature and board games is to play against a human intelligence, with all the unexpected and unorthodox outcomes this might yield.

Being good at 40k involves much more than just list building, target priorities and reacting proactively. I don't think you can create a set of rules which adequately simulates an opponent, although you could certainly create a list of likely actions or objectives that your opponent should prioritize. You could write these on cards, or put them on a chart and die roll them.

 Zingraff wrote:
I suppose you could introduce rules for an "AI" opponent, but you'll likely make the game convoluted and impractical with little to gain from it. Even most board games, which is a format which lends itself better to this sort of thing, fail to deliver what a game with 1 (or more) opponents would be like. The whole point of miniature and board games is to play against a human intelligence, with all the unexpected and unorthodox outcomes this might yield.

Being good at 40k involves much more than just list building, target priorities and reacting proactively. I don't think you can create a set of rules which adequately simulates an opponent, although you could certainly create a list of likely actions or objectives that your opponent should prioritize. You could write these on cards, or put them on a chart and die roll them.

I don't think you could create a set of rules that you'll be able to follow through on. I definitely think you could program some very effective AI behaviour though, if you could commit to taking 1 hour per model moved

 Zingraff wrote:
The whole point of miniature and board games is to play against a human intelligence, with all the unexpected and unorthodox outcomes this might yield.

True; given the choice between playing 40k on my own vs playing against a friend I'll always take the latter. But if that's not an option - if the choiseis playing solo vs not playing at all, then sure, I'll give it a go!

As in, you never want to play against another person?

You can grab 2 armies, get a table, and play both sides. I've done little 500pt skirmishes against myself, but they really lack the fun of not knowing what your opponent is thinking.

It's possible thought, some people play themselves at chess, so playing 40k against yourself wont be that bad. I will say that being the only one rolling dice gets old, and it does get a little repetitive.
There is no certain way to do it, just have 2 colors dice, 2 armies, 2 codex.

Channel your inner schizophrenic?

No seriously, when I was starting out in 2nd ed I used to play solo Eldar vs Orks from the boxed set. There's no way of doing it other than making the best moves for each side at any given time. The pros are it helps to learn the rules and unit strengths. The cons are it's impossible to lay a trap or pull off a clever tactical play!

You can realistically play 2 armies against each other yourself. Just honestly asses the situation and make the best move.

The only problem is there are rare situations where you might not know exactly how your opponent will react to a play - something like a gambit. Those plays loss significance when you are playing against yourself. Everything else will be fine though.

DoW II. Maybe even I. Never III.

craftworld_uk wrote:Channel your inner schizophrenic?

No seriously, when I was starting out in 2nd ed I used to play solo Eldar vs Orks from the boxed set. There's no way of doing it other than making the best moves for each side at any given time. The pros are it helps to learn the rules and unit strengths. The cons are it's impossible to lay a trap or pull off a clever tactical play!

Xenomancers wrote:You can realistically play 2 armies against each other yourself. Just honestly asses the situation and make the best move.

The only problem is there are rare situations where you might not know exactly how your opponent will react to a play - something like a gambit. Those plays loss significance when you are playing against yourself. Everything else will be fine though.

But that is exactly the beauty of such approach - you cannot outsmart your opponent, he is as smart and as well informed on how your army works as you are. As I wrote earlier, I do a lot of "semi co-op" 40k, where me and my opponent discuss every situation and every move and only dice are unpredictable and it is educative as hell and really leads to optimal plays. Due to random dice rolls 40k isn't really a game, where you can precisely engineer a gambit that resolves two or three turns ahead so it is obscured enough to not be clear on the first sight by a skilled opponent. What is usually happening are simple double or tripple forks of the possibility tree, that honest "play as optimal as possible" problem solving approach has to forsee anyway. And with clever approach to terrain/scenario setups, "playing as optimal as possible" can often be more intelectually demanding than playing with a real but mediocre opponent that makes glaring mistakes that cost him games on top of turn 2 or 3... When playing solo or co-op there is also nothing stopping you to "go back" and recreate certain situations again and again until you solve them thus learn from your own mistakes in a very time efficient way. This is really the same thing as playing chess solo, which is considered a good way to practice your repertoire of back-and-forth, codified moves.