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Bait title i know, but I need to add a lot of context. I first played 'wargames' some 30 years ago, starting with 2nd ed Warhammer, then moving through Space Marine/Epic, 40k,Horus Heresy board game, Battlefleet Gothic, Warmaster etc, until life moved me along and I put away/sold my minis in exchange for a family.

I re-entered the 'hobby' primarily through modelling kits, which led me to historicals (ww2 and moderns) - I've seen the recent partwork Warhammer conquest and thus thought about re-starting 40k. BUT - on reading about 40k as it is now, I see comments about 'tabling the opposition on turn 1' or 'list building'.
When I played those other 'wargames' the focus was generally on replicating tactics (real or imagined) that the troops represented would use in 'real' life - overwatching, combined arms, flanking shieldwalls etc - that doesn't seem to be the playerbase focus in 40k, instead it seems to be about 'gaming' the rules themselves as some artificial construct, with any concept that the activity on the board is in some way representative of how a battle might unfold being coincidental at best.

I'm therefore asking dakka - is this right? My brain tells me the issue as I see it is either 1) the 40k rules themselves are poor 'wargame' rules, and if I want to play superhuman Marines against numberless Xenos hordes in a 'realistic' manner then I should get out my copy of the Tomorrows War ruleset; or 2) The rules themselves are fine, but the playerbase has corrupted the intent of the game (whether through design or accident) away from a game trying to simulate war, into a game about itself - the players are playing "Warhammer 40k" as opposed to "Chess", or "Risk", all of which have 'war' themes but don't claim to model actual warfare.

Paragraphs, Evil Edna. Paragraphs.

I can't read any of that.

edited to make a bit more readable! :-)

People enjoy 40k in different ways. Some people have enjoy playing it almost like an RPG where telling a story is more important than trying to win. Some people see it as a numbers game with cool looking meeples, and don't really care about the story. Some people mainly show up to throw dice, drink beer and joke around and everything is secondary to socializing. (Most people like all aspects to a certain extent.)

Games Workshop is trying to do a better job of catering to different kinds of players with their more recent rules. If you want to play games where people are doing their best to replicate the tactics from the fluff, look for narrative events and groups. If you go to a tournament don't be surprised if you run into a bunch of people who are there to win and don't really care if their army doesn't follow the fluff.

Edit: That was a long-winded version of saying that the game can be most anything you want it to be as long as you find like-minded people.

Obviously it's not a war game.

IT'S A WAAAAAAAAGGGH GAME!

Yes it is, just b.c its not a wargame like others doesnt mean its not a wargame.

A wargame (if i remember correctly) is defined as a game with 3 things; Terrain, Miniatures, tactical combat.

Edit: to add, table the opponent is b.c both players didnt agree as to what type of game they will play, thats like playing MTG and 1 person playing Standard and the other Legacy, its not going to have a good outcome.

That is an interesting question. My first war games (besides chess and Risk) were Avalon Hill book shelf games, so when I started 40K in 3rd Ed I was puzzled by its lack of tactical depth. Still, I was enamored with the concept of combining figurines with a war game and over time began to see unique tactical elements to tabletop war gaming that I hadn't discovered before. I felt the rules writers made a genuine attempt to create a competitive rules set that could work with their platoon level sci-fantasy setting, even though much improvement could still be made. 40K seemed even then to be a work in progress.

Considerable effort was made to create a game with elements of balance, playability, scaled models and wide-ranging story while allowing for growth in every facet. It went off the rails at times, but I think there was a real attempt at making a tactical game, even if it was a tad shallow at times.

That no longer seems to be a priority if even a genuine consideration. But people rightly love the models, the setting, the camaraderie, the hobby...but unless you house-rule the heck out of 40K you really don't have a war game any more. It's more a card game with figures as tokens.

Thanks for the responses all - Amanita, I think you are perhaps closest to my experience - and I'm not saying I'm right, just looking for alternatives, to my proposal that 40k may have become a war themed game rather than attempting to be a war simulation.

I'd say 8th edition isn't because what few things that really required careful consideration such as vehicle facing, fire arcs, reserves and deepstrike being a gamble. Instead you basically have aura hammer with a bit of CP battery to pull of card combo powers.

What you're seeing has been going on longer than you've been gaming. It's just that you & the people you played with weren't doing it.
And reading about how the tournament scene functions might not be representative of how people are otherwise playing the game....

Define war game.

Honestly. what separates a war game from a normal game or board game or video game.

is it the subject matter, specific game play aspects, movements, mechanics and the like?

It’s a list building game with dice rolling elements.

Nope. 40k is a war-themed CCG with cards you have to paint yourself.

 Desubot wrote:
Define war game.

Honestly. what separates a war game from a normal game or board game or video game.

is it the subject matter, specific game play aspects, movements, mechanics and the like?

Its 3 things, Armed Miniatures , Terrain, and Combat.

It was when I started (3rd/4th ed) a science fiction game created by wargamers. It is now a science fiction game created by video gamers. I miss the old 40K. For a time FW stood strong for the "military" aspect of the game, but that is largely gone now.

That terrain plays little role in the game now shows how far it has gone in the other direction.

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Desubot wrote:
Define war game.

Honestly. what separates a war game from a normal game or board game or video game.

is it the subject matter, specific game play aspects, movements, mechanics and the like?

Its 3 things, Armed Miniatures , Terrain, and Combat.

Well, that's if we're talking about Miniature Wargames. There's an entire field of board wargames (that I've recently been getting into), which usually come in three flavors - hex-and-counter, block, and card driven. There's even an upcoming 40k game - Heroes of Black Reach.

 infinite_array wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Desubot wrote:
Define war game.

Honestly. what separates a war game from a normal game or board game or video game.

is it the subject matter, specific game play aspects, movements, mechanics and the like?

Its 3 things, Armed Miniatures , Terrain, and Combat.

Well, that's if we're talking about Miniature Wargames. There's an entire field of board wargames (that I've recently been getting into), which usually come in three flavors - hex-and-counter, block, and card driven. There's even an upcoming 40k game - Heroes of Black Reach.

Im talking about miniature as 40k is a miniature game, there are also subcategories like Air War games, Naval , etc...

There is Miniature wargaming and then there is wargaming, or air wargames, or naval wargames, then there is tactics wargaming, etc..

The problem is there are many forms of it, a "war game" is a game with fictional type military operations in a tactic battle, or aka warfare simulation.

So many games falls under those categories and so does warhammer.

The clue is in the name of the hobby:

Miniatures - a love of toy soldiers, painting, making terrain or worlds in miniature, visual appeal
War - real or imagined history, characters, simulation, realistic tactics, narrative
Gaming - rules mastery, winning, competition, clever moves or power combos, casual or serious

And each of us, and every set of wargames rules, rates those three aspects differently.

As a wildly sweeping generalisation, I'd say that miniatures games designers take that range of choice into account. Minis games - to me - seem more likely to produce universal rulesets for playing a particular era or style of game. Compare with more traditional hex-and-chit games, where a designer may create new games with different rules for playing out different engagements in the same conflict to capture unique aspects that particular situation. Of course, there are minis gamers who do that too.

And the audience has ALWAYS asked questions like "what happens if we add dinosaurs, zombies and spellcasters to that...?" Heck, we got the huge range of rulesets as a result of people saying "I don't like..." right from the start of the hobby. GW's success has come at least partly from them offering the combination of tons of background material, cool-looking minis, and games rules to play them with. Really, you're following a grand gaming tradition by deciding exactly what combination of toys and rules you want to play with.

It's a TCG with distance and LOS. CP is mana, stratagems are spells, units are creatures.

 eddieazrael wrote:
Bait title i know, but I need to add a lot of context. I first played 'wargames' some 30 years ago, starting with 2nd ed Warhammer, then moving through Space Marine/Epic, 40k,Horus Heresy board game, Battlefleet Gothic, Warmaster etc, until life moved me along and I put away/sold my minis in exchange for a family.

I re-entered the 'hobby' primarily through modelling kits, which led me to historicals (ww2 and moderns) - I've seen the recent partwork Warhammer conquest and thus thought about re-starting 40k. BUT - on reading about 40k as it is now, I see comments about 'tabling the opposition on turn 1' or 'list building'.
When I played those other 'wargames' the focus was generally on replicating tactics (real or imagined) that the troops represented would use in 'real' life - overwatching, combined arms, flanking shieldwalls etc - that doesn't seem to be the playerbase focus in 40k, instead it seems to be about 'gaming' the rules themselves as some artificial construct, with any concept that the activity on the board is in some way representative of how a battle might unfold being coincidental at best.

I'm therefore asking dakka - is this right? My brain tells me the issue as I see it is either 1) the 40k rules themselves are poor 'wargame' rules, and if I want to play superhuman Marines against numberless Xenos hordes in a 'realistic' manner then I should get out my copy of the Tomorrows War ruleset; or 2) The rules themselves are fine, but the playerbase has corrupted the intent of the game (whether through design or accident) away from a game trying to simulate war, into a game about itself - the players are playing "Warhammer 40k" as opposed to "Chess", or "Risk", all of which have 'war' themes but don't claim to model actual warfare.

40k is not a wargame. The rules are essentially a mechanism to provide a narrative construct for people to play with their toy space demon army, to play out cinematic moments with plastic army dudes, not to be a tactical combat simulation ruleset replicating any sort of actual combat or conflict.

Imo, if you play it right, there are plenty of tactics to be had in 40K. If you play it, ehhh. . . less right, the tactics can take a second seat.

40K takes effort to get what you might be looking for, but it's there for sure.

As bizarre it may sound I find that less competively oriented 40K matches often involve more tactics as the focus is not on winning the game in the list building phase.

 Crimson wrote:
As bizarre it may sound I find that less competively oriented 40K matches often involve more tactics as the focus is not on winning the game in the list building phase.

There is a reason why games like Go and Chess has skill ratings

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Crimson wrote:
As bizarre it may sound I find that less competively oriented 40K matches often involve more tactics as the focus is not on winning the game in the list building phase.

There is a reason why games like Go and Chess has skill ratings

So do games where list building is an element. 40k's problem isn't that it has list building, it's that it has poor balance and very shallow rules that encourage a "line up your models and roll dice until someone rolls higher" strategy from both players.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Crimson wrote:
As bizarre it may sound I find that less competively oriented 40K matches often involve more tactics as the focus is not on winning the game in the list building phase.

There is a reason why games like Go and Chess has skill ratings

So do games where list building is an element. 40k's problem isn't that it has list building, it's that it has poor balance and very shallow rules that encourage a "line up your models and roll dice until someone rolls higher" strategy from both players.

What does that have to do with "is it a wargame?" List building is in many wargames, just b.c inner balance is bad doesnt mean its still not a wargame.

 Amishprn86 wrote:
What does that have to do with "is it a wargame?" List building is in many wargames, just b.c inner balance is bad doesnt mean its still not a wargame.

The point is that 40k is not a wargame because its gameplay is not in the same genre. Wargames involve positioning, real-world tactics, etc. 40k plays much more like a CCG where each side lines up their cards and exchanges offensive and defensive stats on an abstract "battlefield" and the winner is decided by a mix of RNG and skill at optimizing rules interactions to produce the best stat lines. For example, an IG storm trooper squad isn't really a "unit" in the wargame sense, it's much more equivalent to a lightning bolt spell in MTG. You cast "plasma storm troopers", you roll to see how much damage you inflict on another card, and then the spell goes away. It hardly matters where the unit and its target are on the table, you simply declare a target and resolve dice. And tactics have little to do with how good or bad the storm troopers are, their effectiveness is almost entirely based on the value of their stat line relative to their point cost (much like lightning bolt is good in MTG because 3 damage for R is a very efficient spell).

Now, technically some of the wargame elements do still exist in 40k as a relic of its previous editions, but the emphasis is overwhelmingly on CCG-style gameplay.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:
What does that have to do with "is it a wargame?" List building is in many wargames, just b.c inner balance is bad doesnt mean its still not a wargame.

The point is that 40k is not a wargame because its gameplay is not in the same genre. Wargames involve positioning, real-world tactics, etc. 40k plays much more like a CCG where each side lines up their cards and exchanges offensive and defensive stats on an abstract "battlefield" and the winner is decided by a mix of RNG and skill at optimizing rules interactions to produce the best stat lines. For example, an IG storm trooper squad isn't really a "unit" in the wargame sense, it's much more equivalent to a lightning bolt spell in MTG. You cast "plasma storm troopers", you roll to see how much damage you inflict on another card, and then the spell goes away. It hardly matters where the unit and its target are on the table, you simply declare a target and resolve dice. And tactics have little to do with how good or bad the storm troopers are, their effectiveness is almost entirely based on the value of their stat line relative to their point cost (much like lightning bolt is good in MTG because 3 damage for R is a very efficient spell).

Now, technically some of the wargame elements do still exist in 40k as a relic of its previous editions, but the emphasis is overwhelmingly on CCG-style gameplay.

Oh.. so you dont have to worry about where you units are position at all? hmm go play a game and not care and see how far that gets you.

Wait... so your saying in real life we dont just shoot each other? we dont try to not die and shoot more guns at them and win as quick and as easily as we can? with long range missiles? Oh ok

So we dont have gorilla warfare either i guess where positioning is 100% viable, WOW just like in 40k, you need to position in the right spots not ot be charged or shot out of cover, or even shot off an objective.. hmmm.


But no its a Card game to you, even tho 1/2 the missions dont use any cards and you dont need cards to play them game.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:
What does that have to do with "is it a wargame?" List building is in many wargames, just b.c inner balance is bad doesnt mean its still not a wargame.

The point is that 40k is not a wargame because its gameplay is not in the same genre. Wargames involve positioning, real-world tactics, etc. 40k plays much more like a CCG where each side lines up their cards and exchanges offensive and defensive stats on an abstract "battlefield" and the winner is decided by a mix of RNG and skill at optimizing rules interactions to produce the best stat lines. For example, an IG storm trooper squad isn't really a "unit" in the wargame sense, it's much more equivalent to a lightning bolt spell in MTG. You cast "plasma storm troopers", you roll to see how much damage you inflict on another card, and then the spell goes away. It hardly matters where the unit and its target are on the table, you simply declare a target and resolve dice. And tactics have little to do with how good or bad the storm troopers are, their effectiveness is almost entirely based on the value of their stat line relative to their point cost (much like lightning bolt is good in MTG because 3 damage for R is a very efficient spell).

Now, technically some of the wargame elements do still exist in 40k as a relic of its previous editions, but the emphasis is overwhelmingly on CCG-style gameplay.

Would you say that's largely a symptom of the size restrictions of 40k's current state - too large forces and too many vehicles on a too small battlefield - as well as a lack of any real "friction," i.e., command and control challenges?

 Amishprn86 wrote:
Oh.. so you dont have to worry about where you units are position at all?

Not when you have zero-scatter deep strike, weapons with full-table range (and terrain that rarely blocks LOS), and movement speeds high enough to effectively go anywhere you want. Most of the time you just declare a target for your unit and roll dice.

you need to position in the right spots not ot be charged or shot out of cover

95% of time the right spot is incredibly obvious, set during deployment, and completely static. You deploy your IG gunline in the farthest back corner of the table, surround it with bubble wrap, and then you roll dice to see if you can win the game before your opponent can kill your bubble wrap and remove the real threats. Likewise, the charging army's position is incredibly obvious: go straight at the gunline as fast as possible, and roll dice to wipe them off the table once you get in range. When positioning is so obvious and simple it might as well not exist at all, either way you aren't making any interesting decisions with it.

But no its a Card game to you, even tho 1/2 the missions dont use any cards and you dont need cards to play them game.

RULE #1 PLEASE - BROOKM


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 infinite_array wrote:
Would you say that's largely a symptom of the size restrictions of 40k's current state - too large forces and too many vehicles on a too small battlefield - as well as a lack of any real "friction," i.e., command and control challenges?

Partly. Those are certainly contributing factors, but it's also a problem with poor LOS rules, over-homogenization of units, removal of the FOC as a meaningful balance factor, addition of the CP mechanic, etc.

It's a "wargame" by a very loose definition.