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Something I've been mulling over for a while is that when it comes to talking about tactics in 40K, 99% of the time the discussion revolves around what units to pick or what to put in an army, or what wargear options to take. Go look at the tactics forum here or nearly anywhere else. And it made me realize that very little discussion takes place around actual table-level tactical choices. We talk about "what" to put in an army, but rarely talk about "how" to best use a given unit.

I think that when we're talking about army lists, we are really talking about our "strategy" and how we envision a given list being used to accomplish the mission's objectives. Deep strike unit X onto objective Y, flank with unit Z, etc. These strategies are, by nature, fairly broad and idealistic. And as the saying goes no plan survives contact with the enemy!

So the question is this (and hence why I'm asking this here in general and not in the tactics forum): What are the sorts of table-level tactical discussions that could be had, and why don't those seem to happen more? Is it a function of table-level tactics being relatively straight forward and thus not worth talking about?

I saw a post where someone said a top-level player could do well with nearly any army. If that's the case, and list building isn't a factor, what is a top level player doing that others aren't? Surely that must be table-level tactics? If so, what is there to say about it?

A large part is list building and generally knowing how game mechanics work.some table top tactics are already generally ingrained in playstyle for the army.

and why don't those seem to happen more?

It seems pretty obvious: whether real or perceived theres an at-least subconscious understanding and belief that listbuilding strategy matters more than tabletop level tactics do to the outcome of a game.

I saw a post where someone said a top-level player could do well with nearly any army. If that's the case, and list building isn't a factor, what is a top level player doing that others aren't? Surely that must be table-level tactics? If so, what is there to say about it?

I don't know that that is true. If you handed a top-tier player an army list that they had never used before and know nothing about and told them to play with 5 minutes time to familiarize themselves with the army, they probably won't do well. Likewise its not uncommon to hear top-tier players discuss how they tried to play a certain army and just couldn't wrap their heads around how to play them and had to abandon said army. That being said, top-tier players who are given time to familiarize themselves with an army and build and fine tune their own army lists (this is the key part right here), will generally do pretty well with said army though won't necessarily be able to eke out consistent top finishes with more than a couple of their armies. Its very rare to see a player who knows how to win consistently with *every* army. The "skill" that the top tier really have is, more than anything else, knowing what their army does, how it functions, and how all the pieces of the army fit together and what tools and resources they bring to the table - this is why a top tier player using a non-meta list they wrote themselves will almost always outperform a mediocre player using an optimized WAAC meta list that they found online, and why in general those online meta net-lists generally never do as well as competitively outside of the hands of the people who wrote them in the first place.

 Mezmorki wrote:
Something I've been mulling over for a while is that when it comes to talking about tactics in 40K, 99% of the time the discussion revolves around what units to pick or what to put in an army, or what wargear options to take. Go look at the tactics forum here or nearly anywhere else. And it made me realize that very little discussion takes place around actual table-level tactical choices. We talk about "what" to put in an army, but rarely talk about "how" to best use a given unit.

I think that when we're talking about army lists, we are really talking about our "strategy" and how we envision a given list being used to accomplish the mission's objectives. Deep strike unit X onto objective Y, flank with unit Z, etc. These strategies are, by nature, fairly broad and idealistic. And as the saying goes no plan survives contact with the enemy!

So the question is this (and hence why I'm asking this here in general and not in the tactics forum): What are the sorts of table-level tactical discussions that could be had, and why don't those seem to happen more? Is it a function of table-level tactics being relatively straight forward and thus not worth talking about?

I saw a post where someone said a top-level player could do well with nearly any army. If that's the case, and list building isn't a factor, what is a top level player doing that others aren't? Surely that must be table-level tactics? If so, what is there to say about it?

Because there's so many variables that go into how you approach the terrain and the opponent's army. I might be willing to use the move characteristic of Armigers more liberally if my opponent doesn't have a way to threaten them decisively or I have a good lane of obscuring terrain.

You might find yourself changing your plans when you see the opponent by flipping into an ability that reduces movement on a unit and then drop an orbital bombardment on a key unit, but HOW that comes into play matters at the table and is hard to pass on at the tactics forum.

Good players understand their army, the opponent's army, and squeeze every inch ( literally and figuratively ) out of what they can do.

Perhaps it is easier to discuss list-building because you need less context? The opponents and terrain can affect how a give unit performs, but most armies have a few baseline lists. Discussing tabletop manoeuvre on a forum is a little trickier. Often you need a map or diagrams to make a point.

There are certainly tabletop tactics that are useful to know regarding movement, charging, fight sequence, nuances of pile-in and consolidate etc. These little things can make a big difference. There can also be general tactical advice about how to win 9th Ed missions to include Secondary selection and scoring.

I'm a 30 year army officer, and real-world tactics are pretty simple when you boil them down. Some guy named Karl once wrote that everything is very simple in war, but the simplest thing is difficult...

I think it comes down to two different reasons.

1. List building is easy to talk about because it's pretty much divorced from the context of the battlefield. You can attempt to compare units to each other to determine which is best. Everyone understands the goal of list building and it's fairly easy to have objective discussions about units.

2. 40k is, at its heart, a pretty shallow game tactically speaking. That makes the list-building stage more important in many ways than tabletop decisions. Most in-game decisions are actually pretty simple and the ones that aren't usually require too much context around things like terrain and other non-fixed criteria to allow for meaningful discussion.

There's a couple things here: variation of terrain, opponent, opponent's army (when their faction has that option), and the local meta (ie, is it vehicle heavy, 80% marine, little fast stuff, etc).

The other side is some units (or armies) don't need a lot of discussion. Those ork Lootas are going want to be in position to shoot, and they never really want to _not_ be shooting without a really, really good reason. So there isn't much to actually discuss beyond what kind of terrain is available to put them in and 'put them in stationary trukk? Yes/no.'

A similarly mono-khorne daemon no soup army doesn't have much to discuss in terms of tactics. If skullcannons and soulgrinders-> they shoot. Rest of army runs for melee and/or bloodletter bombs.

A lot of people will say 40k is all about the lists so that's why that's the discussion. This was true in the past. It's improved though. The real reason is because there's too many variables.

1. Nobody uses the same terrain. We can't help you with battlefield movements when no one knows or agrees on what the battlefield looks like.

2. Different missions are going to change things up. Advice has to be conditioned on each mission.

Asking for advice on these means laying this all out with pics and/or descriptions. It means arranging models to show movements beyond deployment. Replying means the same. Just too hard to do for most forum discussion.

Ye-esss, you're more or less correct that most discussion of units hinges on their strategic value.

And many other posters have done a good job of pointing out several reasons for this - it's hard to describe the tactical use or best tactical response for a given unit in a given situation, because we don't know the given situation.

However, maybe what you're looking for is something along the lines of "Space Marine bikers put out 4 S4 shots each at 24 inches, and they can move 14 inches, so their threat range is 38 inches. If you want to subsequently charge, that threat range is about 20-21 inches. So bikers are tactically useful in situations where you have open sight lines and can see a unit that will be impacted by S4 shooting in the 25-30 inch range, and another unit that you want to tie up or is really weak in the 18-21 inch range."

Another thing that is very relevant to the game is unit activation sequence. If you activate another unit before the bikers and it shoots into the 18-21 inch distant unit so that the bikers can no longer reach it, you've made a tactical mistake, so you have to bear that in mind too.

I do find there is a dearth of table play advice content in the 40k community compared to a lot of wargames I've played.

I think that contributes to the amount of recorded games I see where players just YOLO their army forward. That just happened in the recent TTT game of Ultras versus Necrons. Worse, the chat conversation went to list comp and faction balance when Ultras got blown out rather than the poor play that was the largest contributing factor.

I was more convinced that lists won until I played more and more.

I mean, a very good list will most of the time win agaisnt a bad list.

But once you are on the table it is not soo easy to actually play in the right way. Most players, myself included ,are actually below mediocre, and thats normal, you can't be good at a game you plat what... 1-2 times a week? And thats a lot for most people. 3-4 games a month is much more normal.

People play dozens and dozens of games of their favourite videogames each month and they still suck at them.

I think a bad list can lose you a game, but a good list cannot win it for you on its own. But it doesn't hurt to have a good list!

Because frankly, actual tactics are incredibly difficult to talk about. HOW you use a unit as opposed to WHICH unit to use is really tough to actually describe.

 Galas wrote:
But once you are on the table it is not soo easy to actually play in the right way. Most players, myself included ,are actually below mediocre, and thats normal, you can't be good at a game you plat what... 1-2 times a week? And thats a lot for most people. 3-4 games a month is much more normal.

People play dozens and dozens of games of their favourite videogames each month and they still suck at them.

It definitely takes time to process everything. I forgot for a while that you gain a CP each turn. Another is the rule change where if you save with a model that model takes all future saves that phase, so if you shoot terminators with bolters and the SS takes it then when you shoot with a new unit with bigger guns then that SS model has to take those shots again even if it was never wounded.

COVID definitely makes it difficult to play enough and once we start gaming again we'll see tons of people playing catch up on the details.

 Mezmorki wrote:
Something I've been mulling over for a while is that when it comes to talking about tactics in 40K, 99% of the time the discussion revolves around what units to pick or what to put in an army, or what wargear options to take. Go look at the tactics forum here or nearly anywhere else. And it made me realize that very little discussion takes place around actual table-level tactical choices. We talk about "what" to put in an army, but rarely talk about "how" to best use a given unit.

I think that when we're talking about army lists, we are really talking about our "strategy" and how we envision a given list being used to accomplish the mission's objectives. Deep strike unit X onto objective Y, flank with unit Z, etc. These strategies are, by nature, fairly broad and idealistic. And as the saying goes no plan survives contact with the enemy!

So the question is this (and hence why I'm asking this here in general and not in the tactics forum): What are the sorts of table-level tactical discussions that could be had, and why don't those seem to happen more? Is it a function of table-level tactics being relatively straight forward and thus not worth talking about?

I saw a post where someone said a top-level player could do well with nearly any army. If that's the case, and list building isn't a factor, what is a top level player doing that others aren't? Surely that must be table-level tactics? If so, what is there to say about it?

This is exactly one of the many reasons why i still play 5th edition and hate 9th. objectives that matter at the end of the game(allowing for some "last chance" pull victory out of defeat by the skin of your teeth type battles you may have been loosing on body count) and change drastically if the games random roll goes to turn 6 or 7, maneuver around and use of terrain to your advantage, targeting priority, building a single well rounded list that can deal with all aspects of the battlefield(easier to do with marines as generalists) no matter what army you face..

The luck of the dice will always play into it of course, however the key difference in editions to me is one wins on the battlefield, the other wins in the list design/building stage. because of the latter you see so much focus now on building as you pointed out.

Back when 4th and 5th were the current edition we had a regular tournament minded player who would constantly build copies of lists that were event winners(rouge traders and grand tournaments), but he would often fail with them because the list itself wasn't going to win the game and when he didn't know how to use it properly on the table he would often face frustrating losses.

I think rather than saying a very good player would win with a bad list against a poor player with a good list, there is a better way to look at the influence of how the list is played.

As others have said, familiarity with a list, and a faction and all the special rules and synergies is as important, if not more so than the list itself. Not that the list isn't important, but to me, being a "good" player means hitting 3 things: Having a good list, knowing your list and how to play it, and generally knowing and being good at the game (core mechanics).

A better comparison to determine if the playing of the game is important rather than just the list, would be to have a mirror match, where both players have the same list, and are equally familiar with the list. In this hypothetical, I would expect the tabletop tactics to be the deciding factor, and the "good" player would win more often than not.

You know those chess tactics puzzles and analyses that you see in the back of the paper? Like the board is laid out and what would you do? Someone should do a series of those for 40K.
Not me i'm too new to 9th and haven't got time. Maybe one day when i've retired (can't wait for 15th edition it's gonna be best yet!).

 Daedalus81 wrote:


It definitely takes time to process everything. I forgot for a while that you gain a CP each turn. Another is the rule change where if you save with a model that model takes all future saves that phase, so if you shoot terminators with bolters and the SS takes it then when you shoot with a new unit with bigger guns then that SS model has to take those shots again even if it was never wounded.

Oh this one is a good one, people here play it wrong. they do all saves on the same model, but on a unit per unit basis. Very thankful for this information.

As others have pointed out a lot of it is that each tactical puzzle on the board is unique. You've got a fairly unique combination of terrain, enemy units and your own deployment to consider. So most of the discussion happens at the table with your opponent ("Man, I really should have moved those Warriors up to the higher ground earlier in the game...") and is difficult to generalise into a topic that is easily discussed with strangers online. Lists are universal, standard, and everyone has access to the same information to discuss them, making them ideal for discussion online.

I think list building also has a greater impact on play than it should in 40K because spurring this discussion is good for engagement with the hobby and so the designers make it part of the game. You see this in other similar hobbies, like most discussion of dungeons and dragons online is about building certain characters and the relative merits of new classes and abilities in the abstract. This gives people something hobby related to do when they are not playing, which is cool and not a bad thing.

Personally I am a bit over all of it myself for various reasons. I'm not as interested in optimising lists any more and just want to play with my favourite models when I get a chance to play (which is rare).

Knowledge of other factions is critical too. That's becoming harder and harder. At one time you could know what the various units in an opponent's list did, what their defensive stats were, the unit type would give you their movement etc. Now there are way more factions, way more units, chapter tactics/hive fleets/kultures etc., more psychic powers, lots of relics and stratagems. You'd have to be real die hard to know all of this stuff

Given that, it seems advantageous to run a simple list that mostly plays one way regardless of the opponent. If 80% of your army are CC beatsticks you know what you have to do. A balanced mix of units could leave you open to making big mistakes

 PaddyMick wrote:
You know those chess tactics puzzles and analyses that you see in the back of the paper? Like the board is laid out and what would you do? Someone should do a series of those for 40K.
Not me i'm too new to 9th and haven't got time. Maybe one day when i've retired (can't wait for 15th edition it's gonna be best yet!).

It's a cool idea and would be great if somebody could pull it off, but the difference with chess is a quick glance at the table only tells you part of the story. What powers do the psykers have, what are the relics and where, how many CP are available, what are the actual distances, how many wounds is everything on? You'd have to study the lists too. It would take forever just to figure out what the situation actually is, before you even considered what moves to make

I find that 9th favours a player that makes a turn by turn plan for the game. Flexibility is required, but you need to decide how you are going to score by turn. Waiting until the end of the game to think about objectives will not work. You need to visualize (roughly) where your units will be in time and space. You can't just rely on blasting the enemy off the board.

Do you send a small but powerful fixing force up one flank to distract your opponent, deny an objective and tie up some of his key units while your main effort runs up the other flank to be able to score more? Do you dominate the centre with something incredibly resilient? How do you select and score your Secondaries? There are tactical decisions beyond list-building, although of course list-building can determine which tactics are viable for you.

Another issue when discussing tactics is that a lot of the things from other games (or IRL) doesn't translate into 40k. Units have 360 degree los, there's no penalty to being attacked from unexpected side, and the game has no Command and control aspects to speak of- heroes don't command, they just give buffs. At best clever manouvering will get you no cover bonus to the target.

So in the end it mostly comes down to target priority- knowing what is the biggest immediate danger and firing on it first.

As others have said, real tactics are hard to discuss.

You see those discussions going on in the commentary of battle reports, because in that case you have the info required.

On a discussion board though that will not happen. That sort of discussion would be too specific and too much of an hassle.

By the way, to compete a good list is required. What you don't need is a meta list.
"Good" list means just that it has been assembled with a decent rational. You don't need to spam your meta units to make a good list.
The difference between a decently assembled list and a meta list isn't that big, it can give you that little edge over the opponent, but players count for much more than that.

 Mezmorki wrote:
Something I've been mulling over for a while is that when it comes to talking about tactics in 40K, 99% of the time the discussion revolves around what units to pick or what to put in an army, or what wargear options to take. Go look at the tactics forum here or nearly anywhere else. And it made me realize that very little discussion takes place around actual table-level tactical choices. We talk about "what" to put in an army, but rarely talk about "how" to best use a given unit.

I think that when we're talking about army lists, we are really talking about our "strategy" and how we envision a given list being used to accomplish the mission's objectives. Deep strike unit X onto objective Y, flank with unit Z, etc. These strategies are, by nature, fairly broad and idealistic. And as the saying goes no plan survives contact with the enemy!

So the question is this (and hence why I'm asking this here in general and not in the tactics forum): What are the sorts of table-level tactical discussions that could be had, and why don't those seem to happen more? Is it a function of table-level tactics being relatively straight forward and thus not worth talking about?

I saw a post where someone said a top-level player could do well with nearly any army. If that's the case, and list building isn't a factor, what is a top level player doing that others aren't? Surely that must be table-level tactics? If so, what is there to say about it?

Well, you hit the nail on the head - list building is part of your strategy, and strategies are long-term and broad. I think part of the reason that strategies are discussed more than tactics online is for 2 reasons:

#1 - It's difficult to explain precise situations where certain tactics apply, and yet more difficult to explain how you may want or not want to apply that tactic even in the exact same "zoomed in" situation based on how the entire rest of the battle is going. It's just crazy broad.
#2 - A lot of tactics sounds really dumb and simple in 40k, and a lot of people on this forum will put you down for point out such simple things. Yes, the tactics themselves are easy to execute, but we face a lot of time pressure in our games, and with the number of choices available to us at any one moment, we often make decisions without thinking through each option, and so miss these chances. When I play and we have time and relax, my games go on for 4hrs. When I play under a tourney time constraint, I gotta cut corners to squeeze into 2.5hrs.

Take, for example, the simple zone-out. Properly executed, you can zone out your entire backfield with just about 3 models if they're in different units, or just 2 small units. Heck even 1 larger unit. It's hard for me to explain how to do it properly. Sure, I could just say to maximize the space between your models, but that's not always the right thing to do. You may want to hide the unit as you're doing it so it can't be disrupted. You may want to be holding an objective while you're doing it. You may want to goad your opponent into dealing with them. You may want to keep them in range of an aura. You may be able to sneak some inches out by taking into account the size of the units that would deep strike in. You may need to be more aware of the sides of your deployment zone than the back. Whatever the case, it's not as easy as "well just do this", and that makes it hard to talk about.

For this reason, I really enjoy battle reports, either video or written, where they showcase a certain tactic. It's just so hard to show them without real world situations.

Good remarks and thoughts overall...

... but I don't entirely agree with the sentiment that it's too difficult to discuss TLT (table-level tactics). That sounds like making excuses for not talking about it more, because talking about lists is easier / more transferrable.

Broadly speaking, I think there are some broad areas that would offer up ample opportunity for more focused tactical discussions. Essentially, look at every "decision point" on the table - that's an opportunity for tactical discussion.

* Deployment order - deploying aggressively vs. defensively, when to do one or the other. The ways in which table-level terrain might support one approach over the other. Using infiltrators to lock down sections of the board. When to place units in reserve.

* Command phase - tips, strategies, etc about using command points. Balancing of planned use of powers vs. reserving CP's for reactive uses.

* Whole army movement coordination - not getting units jammed up in tight areas, knowing when to fall back out of melee, when to run vs. advance. How best to utilize cover/terrain depending on the types of units involved in a firefight.

* Shooting phase - logic for determining target priorities, how to split/divide unit shooting attacks against multiple targets.

* Assaulting - How to best setup charges, protecting melee units on the approach/charge. Order in which to activate other unit's melee attacks. Defensive charging / denying opponent charges.

* Playing to objectives - positioning models/units to deny easy access to objectives and/or maintaining control.

* Reading your opponent's list - coming up with counter plays based on the matchup. Dealing with problematic units.

I feel like any of these topics could be fruitful for discussion. Comments above seem to assert that specific tactical situations are too complex to discuss / convey - but I think when it comes down to it there aren't really that many different situations/scenarios at a conceptual level within the topics above.

I will say, that I think 9th ed is hamstrung a bit because there a fair amount of tactical nuance in prior editions that relate to TLT were lost in the "great simplification" of the core rules in 8th/9th. Use of cover has changed, inability to flank vehicles, unit initiative and how that impacts coordinated assaults, in-ability for units to inherently split fire, trade-offs for things like going to ground or not, etc. Many of these rules created decision points of their own, which added tactical opportunities.

I would challenge you, then, to try and discuss target priority without it becoming a dissertation . If you can do it in a useful way without it becoming just an ongoing replies of "well what about this?" then I will congratulate you!

OP is right and it's also the reason why I mostly stay away from the tactics forum. Many "discussions" boil down to: Take that unit instead of the one you're planning to take. Or: "This is useless because of Space Marines" (or whatever the current Meta is).
It would be far more interesting to read about actual tactics. I mean, I'm reading my Codex, work out synergies and which stratagems to use and which units to use against what and when I finally have a game, every time in turn 1 I realize: Crap, messed up my deploiment again Or in 9th: Hmm, I probably should have taken this or that secondary instead of X.

First lets clear up the terms.

Tactics is what you use at the table level. How you react to different situations in hopes of accomplishing certain goals. "I am going to place this unit here to try and bait that unit into moving into x position"

Strategy is your broad strokes over all plan before the game begins. Thats your list building and even your deployment.

"These units will sit in the back to protect my deployment zone and provide fire support while x,y,z will blitz into the enemy lines to stir things up".

40k basically has no tactics. It's all strategy. And that is why it's difficult to discuss and why almost all of the conversation revolves around list building.

In order to have any meaningful tactics the players have to be able to interact with each other in meaningful ways. But 99.9% of the time your strategy is your best bet with a singular clear obvious thing for you to do. And thats mostly remove enemy models as quickly as possible so they have less models to shoot back at you on the next turn. You feed them unfavorable targets if you can. You shoot your principle targets if you can. You tie up x unit if you can.

The game has no tactical depth. Thats the problem.

 Lance845 wrote:
40k basically has no tactics. It's all strategy. And that is why it's difficult to discuss and why almost all of the conversation revolves around list building.

In order to have any meaningful tactics the players have to be able to interact with each other in meaningful ways. But 99.9% of the time your strategy is your best bet with a singular clear obvious thing for you to do. And thats mostly remove enemy models as quickly as possible so they have less models to shoot back at you on the next turn. You feed them unfavorable targets if you can. You shoot your principle targets if you can. You tie up x unit if you can.

The game has no tactical depth. Thats the problem.

I think this is a part of the problem for sure - although I didn't want to be the one to say it first

That said...

 Yarium wrote:
I would challenge you, then, to try and discuss target priority without it becoming a dissertation . If you can do it in a useful way without it becoming just an ongoing replies of "well what about this?" then I will congratulate you!

... maybe it requires more of a dissertation?

Goonhammer has some good tactics articles that are broadly applicable. They don't have one specifically on target priority, but here's on one screening with units:

https://www.goonhammer.com/start-competing-how-to-screen-everything/

These are the kinds of things I'm talking about - tactics involving how to position individual models within a unit to maximize their potential output and/or survivability, or work some other level of table-level magic to take advantage of board position, tempo, etc.

But screening is MOSTLY deployment. Which again, is strategy. You put that unit in your list TO screen. You deployed it there to screen. When your moving around the board you move them in tandem to maintain your screen. When the enemy hits it it's done it's job and you move on to phase 2 of your strategy.

It's not a tactical discussion. It's a strategic one. It's a plan you enter the table with before the game even began.