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Some people are proactive planners. They want a plan set out and will do their best to follow that plan. What armies play best under a proactive planners who love seeing a plan come together?

On the flip side, some people like to made decisions completely on intuition, and having a plan is more of an annoyance. They like to play more letting their inner instincts run the show. Which armies play better to the intuitive individual?

 Smotejob wrote:
Some people are proactive planners. They want a plan set out and will do their best to follow that plan. What armies play best under a proactive planners who love seeing a plan come together?

On the flip side, some people like to made decisions completely on intuition, and having a plan is more of an annoyance. They like to play more letting their inner instincts run the show. Which armies play better to the intuitive individual?

I don't know any army specifically, but I would say high mobility armies, as they force your opponent to react to what you do.

Planning and reaction to changing situations are two halves of the same coin and in an ideal world a player will make use of both skills.

It means that aplayer has an understanding of the games theory and how it works as well as their own army when they make a pre-battle plan. This might not be highly complex, but it at least gives them structure. This is knowing where to deploy to get best effect; its knowing what units need to be closer to others to support; its about having an idea of what the opponent might take, of the objective of the game etc... and building the army around that.

Reactionary playing skills are built on those core understandings. Indeed any plan needs to have reactionary elements in the players skills otherwise they will fail.



Generally I see those who lack a plan often have gaps in their game understanding; this forces them to be reactionary players but because they've got those gaps it means that their reactive choices are not as good as they could be - and always being reactive to the changing battlefield means that they can't push the opponent into a reactive position.

A good player is both proactive and reactive and adapts the two skills through the changing nature of the game.

Heck having a plan can often mean the difference between going for the objectives that will win the game; and getting distracted with attacking the enemy.










That said in answer to your direct question;
An army that is purely reactive is a tough fight and thus you ideally want models that are tough ;dish out good damage and an overall army that has little reliance on auras, buffs and support units.

As said above, any army benefits from an overall plan; but those armies that are heavily reliant on buffs and auras and debuffs and support units is going to be even more reliant on good positioning and use of models and an overall good plan.


Note I've not put army names here as some armies can do either depending on the units that are chosen and the equipment they are fielded with.

This is Warhammer 40k.

Games are won and lost at the list creation, and list matchup stages.

Don't kid yourself - there aren't "tactics" or "strategies" in this game; at least not anymore. Every single aspect of the game got dumbed down, and made worse.

Then play an older edition which you believe was tactical and strategic (hint: Warhammer 40K has never been). Seriously, change the game yourself, or play another game. It's not tough.

All in all, there is strategy and tactics in 40k. List building is intrinsically tied to strategy, and what you bring dictates what tactical and strategic options you will have on the field. If you don't want army composition to play a role in the tactics of the game, you should probably play a game where you get fixed army composition.

That said, while both preparation and reaction are important aspects, I'd hazard a guess that armies with lots of specialist units probably favor increased preparation while armies with lots of generalists probably handle reactionary play better.

In addition, while being unable to react and adapt your strategy will lead to defeat, because most foes won't cooperate in their defeat-in-detail, failing to adequately prepare won't present you with opportunities to react.

One thing that's come up when talking with my friends who are new to the game is making sure to have a path to victory. The less convoluted and more resilient to enemy interference, the better. You can't just plop some models on the table with no clear direction and expect them to perform, you need to know how each unit will contribute to victory when you build your list.

While both are important I disagree with how some people have said you can't play proactively intuitively. If you play by intuition and know the game and the armies involved you can feel where you need to send your dudes to hit your opponent hard. The difference between planning and intuition is that planning is analysing and weighing up the options consciously while intuition is doing it subconsciously. A planner will generally be more accurate with their decisions because they look at the probabilities and consider each move but they'll reach their decision slower and it will be more mentally draining over a long game/event. An intuitive player will decide faster, be taxed less because they're typically not thinking as hard and running through all the scenarios but may may a suboptimal missing one that is statistically 3% better for example.

As people have said planning benefits most for armies that have more specialised units and intuition benefits a more flexible army the most. So planning is best for an army like craftworlds where units are more specialised, fragile and need to be positioned and utilised correctly. Intuition on the other hand works best for an army along the lines of death guard where they're more resilient and units are more flexible.

Ideally you want to know your army well enough that you can effectively run your army through intuition and have it be indistinguishable from if you planned every move meticulously.

fe40k wrote:
This is Warhammer 40k.

Games are won and lost at the list creation, and list matchup stages.

Don't kid yourself - there aren't "tactics" or "strategies" in this game; at least not anymore. Every single aspect of the game got dumbed down, and made worse.

Sad but true. There was a special knight battle event at my local GW several months ago. The knights moved around the table littered with expensive plastic terrain kit and could not claim once a cover save or even hide behind a ruin because of the truly atrocious cover rules of 8th. So the best you could do in this situation is to throw away all the terrain features at the start of the game and play on planet bowling ball as was intended by GW.

Planning armies: Gunline/shooting focused forces, or on the other side, purely frontloaded alpha strike armies.

The reason why you see such a predominance of such lists at the midlevels of competitive play is because their performance is very consistent - they deploy and execute their plan with very minor in-game decision making.

intuitive armies: TAC and high-mobility forces, lower mobility horde forces that intend to take heavy casualties.

The former is fairly obvious - if your army is designed around mobility, objectives and surgical strikes, you need to make much more tactical decisions midgame to figure out your focus. The latter primarily involves how your casualties are spread, whether you opt to go for an objective focus or a killing focus depending on matchup is highly dependent on your success. This is why we've seen relatively small numbers of ork players in 8th but they've had such heavy success - in the hands of a good player a horde can accomplish much more than the sum of its parts.