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 Horst wrote:

 Irkjoe wrote:
Could someone be specific about what exactly makes 40k skillful? Because I'm not sure what to make of it when lined up next to other games that just seem much more involved.

It's the ability to plan ahead and to keep track of everything going on. Let me give you an example... Guard vs Genestealer Cults. Guard has some leman russes, some bullgryn, a few sentinels, and a bunch of infantry. Genestealers have 2 squads of Acolytes with Rocksaws, 2 squads of Abberants with picks and stopsigns, a flamer bomb squad of acolytes, and a bunch of characters to buff everything, with a bunch of smaller characters. Assume Guard gets unlucky and has to go first.

Guard needs to keep the Leman Russes alive, that's the primary goal, since that's most of the firepower. But all the Genestealers can deep strike and assault. They can also deep strike the flamer squad in within 3" of you, kill a bunch of infantry, and then deep strike a harder hitting squad into the cleared hole, then assault with them. SO, Guard needs to carefully position their army such that there are multiple layers of infantry screens between the important tanks and the possible deep strikers. They also need to ensure the Bullgryns are in a position where they can counter-charge any high-value targets that come in. Guard needs to try to anticipate where the GSC will want to deep strike, and have a plan to counter it, keeping in mind that the GSC player may assault in such a way that they take a squad "hostage", so that they cannot be shot at. If you remove the wrong guy in the shooting phase, it might give the GSC an opportunity to easily surround a unit in the assault phase, letting him take a hostage. You want to prevent this at all costs, or at least control where it happens so the Bullgryn can counter charge.

You need to keep all this in mind, while planning what objectives you can take from your opponent (admittedly not difficult vs GSC in an ITC matchup, Headhunter, Engineers, and Reaper most likely) while preventing the opponent from getting "Kill More", since he'll almost certainly hold more objectives every turn. This isn't easy, given that you'll need to sacrifice 2-3 squads of Infantry per turn to keep him off your valuable units.

As a Guard player, this is all stuff you need to keep in mind for ONE matchup.... Tau require a different approach, as do Knights and Eldar and Orks and every other top tier army out there. If you don't have a plan for every matchup you go into, you are not going to win vs a skilled opponent fielding that army.

The thing is...all those things you list are just not that skill-intensive. It's a very simple "skill" to learn that you need to screen against deep strike, and Guard are one of the better armies at doing it too. Different armies have different challenges depending on specific special rules but the principles are the same across the board. Obviously you need to adapt against different armies but I don't think you can measure skill purely through the number of decisions required in order to win a game. It's the nature of the decisions that is more important. If you have 100 little things you need to keep track of, but each one is actually very trivial (or at least a solved problem), it's not really a reflection of skill if you get all those decisions correct, it's just a memory test. It's the perfect example of what I talked about before where "skill" can be replaced with a checklist you need to work down.

The same applies to the small comment above about ITC. So many of the secondaries in that version of the game are fixed decisions based on your own army or your opponents, and it's again perfectly possible to devise a "cheat sheet" that you can use to help you select secondaries in various match-ups.

Slipspace wrote:

 Horst wrote:

 Irkjoe wrote:
Could someone be specific about what exactly makes 40k skillful? Because I'm not sure what to make of it when lined up next to other games that just seem much more involved.

It's the ability to plan ahead and to keep track of everything going on. Let me give you an example... Guard vs Genestealer Cults. Guard has some leman russes, some bullgryn, a few sentinels, and a bunch of infantry. Genestealers have 2 squads of Acolytes with Rocksaws, 2 squads of Abberants with picks and stopsigns, a flamer bomb squad of acolytes, and a bunch of characters to buff everything, with a bunch of smaller characters. Assume Guard gets unlucky and has to go first.

Guard needs to keep the Leman Russes alive, that's the primary goal, since that's most of the firepower. But all the Genestealers can deep strike and assault. They can also deep strike the flamer squad in within 3" of you, kill a bunch of infantry, and then deep strike a harder hitting squad into the cleared hole, then assault with them. SO, Guard needs to carefully position their army such that there are multiple layers of infantry screens between the important tanks and the possible deep strikers. They also need to ensure the Bullgryns are in a position where they can counter-charge any high-value targets that come in. Guard needs to try to anticipate where the GSC will want to deep strike, and have a plan to counter it, keeping in mind that the GSC player may assault in such a way that they take a squad "hostage", so that they cannot be shot at. If you remove the wrong guy in the shooting phase, it might give the GSC an opportunity to easily surround a unit in the assault phase, letting him take a hostage. You want to prevent this at all costs, or at least control where it happens so the Bullgryn can counter charge.

You need to keep all this in mind, while planning what objectives you can take from your opponent (admittedly not difficult vs GSC in an ITC matchup, Headhunter, Engineers, and Reaper most likely) while preventing the opponent from getting "Kill More", since he'll almost certainly hold more objectives every turn. This isn't easy, given that you'll need to sacrifice 2-3 squads of Infantry per turn to keep him off your valuable units.

As a Guard player, this is all stuff you need to keep in mind for ONE matchup.... Tau require a different approach, as do Knights and Eldar and Orks and every other top tier army out there. If you don't have a plan for every matchup you go into, you are not going to win vs a skilled opponent fielding that army.

The thing is...all those things you list are just not that skill-intensive. It's a very simple "skill" to learn that you need to screen against deep strike, and Guard are one of the better armies at doing it too. Different armies have different challenges depending on specific special rules but the principles are the same across the board. Obviously you need to adapt against different armies but I don't think you can measure skill purely through the number of decisions required in order to win a game. It's the nature of the decisions that is more important. If you have 100 little things you need to keep track of, but each one is actually very trivial (or at least a solved problem), it's not really a reflection of skill if you get all those decisions correct, it's just a memory test. It's the perfect example of what I talked about before where "skill" can be replaced with a checklist you need to work down.

The same applies to the small comment above about ITC. So many of the secondaries in that version of the game are fixed decisions based on your own army or your opponents, and it's again perfectly possible to devise a "cheat sheet" that you can use to help you select secondaries in various match-ups.

Which brings us back to competitive deckbuilding,
taking this to be an important aspect of "the game"
that every "good" player must master to direct advantage,

and the set of CCG/video gamy set structure expectations
which prefigure what might be otherwise.

The root trouble seems to be
looking at the last page or two of this thread for instance
that people proceed seemingly unaware of the pretension.


It is not a matter of biological age, necessarily, as when i was young the game was much different,
and reflected the radically different attitudes about, say, spamming units for advantage.

It might be a matter of age in terms of era,
as in latter day corporate capitalism has turned humanity on its head
in my lifetime
and here is the proof.

that people proceed seemingly unaware of the pretension

That is certainly an accurate statement. New players going in unaware, assuming 2000 point army they bought should be balanced and fun against anyone else's 2000 point army only to find out "gotcha, you didn't stack the blue black deck this time around and thats what GW made OP this year" after having spent $500 - $800 or more on their army is a fairly severe negative experience.

And then its "oh you did stack the blue black deck this time around, thats awesome, but in december with chapter approved GW decides the white red green combo is OP so you need to rebuy and paint a new army k thx bai".

That was the main reason I got off the tourney train. It was just exhausting having to constantly buy new armies and paint them, specifically models I had no love for but were OP.

 Horst wrote:

 Irkjoe wrote:
Could someone be specific about what exactly makes 40k skillful? Because I'm not sure what to make of it when lined up next to other games that just seem much more involved.

It's the ability to plan ahead and to keep track of everything going on. Let me give you an example... Guard vs Genestealer Cults. Guard has some leman russes, some bullgryn, a few sentinels, and a bunch of infantry. Genestealers have 2 squads of Acolytes with Rocksaws, 2 squads of Abberants with picks and stopsigns, a flamer bomb squad of acolytes, and a bunch of characters to buff everything, with a bunch of smaller characters. Assume Guard gets unlucky and has to go first.

Guard needs to keep the Leman Russes alive, that's the primary goal, since that's most of the firepower. But all the Genestealers can deep strike and assault. They can also deep strike the flamer squad in within 3" of you, kill a bunch of infantry, and then deep strike a harder hitting squad into the cleared hole, then assault with them. SO, Guard needs to carefully position their army such that there are multiple layers of infantry screens between the important tanks and the possible deep strikers. They also need to ensure the Bullgryns are in a position where they can counter-charge any high-value targets that come in. Guard needs to try to anticipate where the GSC will want to deep strike, and have a plan to counter it, keeping in mind that the GSC player may assault in such a way that they take a squad "hostage", so that they cannot be shot at. If you remove the wrong guy in the shooting phase, it might give the GSC an opportunity to easily surround a unit in the assault phase, letting him take a hostage. You want to prevent this at all costs, or at least control where it happens so the Bullgryn can counter charge.

You need to keep all this in mind, while planning what objectives you can take from your opponent (admittedly not difficult vs GSC in an ITC matchup, Headhunter, Engineers, and Reaper most likely) while preventing the opponent from getting "Kill More", since he'll almost certainly hold more objectives every turn. This isn't easy, given that you'll need to sacrifice 2-3 squads of Infantry per turn to keep him off your valuable units.

As a Guard player, this is all stuff you need to keep in mind for ONE matchup.... Tau require a different approach, as do Knights and Eldar and Orks and every other top tier army out there. If you don't have a plan for every matchup you go into, you are not going to win vs a skilled opponent fielding that army.

Thank you Horst for providing a detailed example of how ITC is a solvable variant of 40K and how 40K is not all-that-much skill based game, but VERY much KNOWLEDGE based game, even more so under the ITC. Almost all your major points except from minute decisions about placement during fight phase are either pre game or at the latest deployment phase decisions. All pre game decisions boil down to listbuilding and knowing before hand how to setup your list against an archetype from a meta-checklist. There is no skill here, only knowledge about 40k factions. The skill comes in play when you have to anticipate further moves on a game tree and adapt to those moves, but since, as you said yourself, early turns are pretty much scripted based on matchup and deployment, only later turns are an unknown to solve on the fly, and as I have shown you above, three turns of 40k is a very small decision tree to go through to find optimal branch to follow, but then all results of your choices on that branch are subject to dice rolls.

Seriously, I knew about all those „skills” you think there are in ITC and I still hold my position, that compared to trully skill based games 40k, and especially ITC 40k is very shallow in that regard and is pretty much solvable game if you have enough KNOWLEDGE about the game. To compare it to Go this time - normal Go game is played on a 19x19 grid while the game has been solved for maximimum of 6x6 grid with probable solution for 7x7 grid. All you wrote above about how to play a game in a skillfull manner are comments that are more akin to instructions to follow in a solved game than comments about how to approach an unsolved one. And that is perfectly in line with what ITC format tries to achieve with it’s modifications of „stock” 40k from game design perspective: in order to minimize randomness of 40k, ITC removes a lot of unknowns and on top of that moves a lot of variables to the pre-game phases (listbuilding not only for maximizing efficiency, but also denying secondaries to opponents and securing your own secondaries) because it cannot remove variables (dice rolls) from the core game engine. In result, ITC is an armchair game of trying to solve a very large set of fixed entries better than other players before any dice is even rolled and then apply this solution during the match. Your top players are undoubtly better at this than lower ranked players, but I really don’t think that they would rank equally on top in a fixed list format, that measures adaptation and thinking on the fly instead of preparing for every case beforehand.

Imagine this hypothetical situation: you show up on a tournament but are only presented with the list everyone plays 5mins before first match and the (heavily differing) mission everyone have to play each round is presented just before deployment. Everyone plays the same, so the table is even, but all but few current „skills” in 40k go out the window. You still apply bublewraps, you still deploy for list strenghts and weaknesses, but you must adapt to really varied missions which can seriously alter optimal play and you get accustomed with the list only as you progress through the tournament. That would be very close to how Bridge tournaments are organized.

And from experience... people would freak the **** out if thats how tournaments were.

 auticus wrote:
And from experience... people would freak the **** out if thats how tournaments were.

I do notice that competitive 40k players seem to hate things that would make the game require something more than list building as the primary skill. Look at all the arguments over missions; having something like Maelstrom missions, hated as they are, means you can't pre-prepare for whatever will come as you can in ITC (incidentally in a White Dwarf, I think it's the next one, there's a variant Maelstrom mission that lets you basically pick your objective deck; it feels way better than the regular one but not as gamey as ITC secondaries; if it wasn't for ITC's dominance and arrogance I'd say it has a good chance of becoming the standard because it adds just a right amount of "fog of war" without being obnoxious like the current version). And look at how much bitching we see over how "better" ITC missions are because they let you know beforehand. It's always gnashing of teeth because they WANT to know things beforehand, they don't want to think on their feet because they got caught unaware, and will argue tooth and nail how that doesn't "reward" the more skillful player, skillful in this case almost always meaning "can build the better list" rather than "can play their army better". If the top players were that great that they could win regardless, then they should want to remove list building as the primary factor from the equation so there can be no doubt to the fact it's their skill, and not their list, that wins for them.

Its the culture of the game. The game attracts people that like deckbuilding exercises. So naturally those people would be angry if your competitive events neutralized those to some degree.

One small correction to what I wrote above: current top players would probably still place in higher percentiles, but a LOT of lower ranked players would now reliably move up the ladder, those who are able to think as well as those from top, but are unwilling or unable to "churn and burn" as efficiently, so effectively you would find that there is a lot more rotation at the top, reflecting the random nature of the 40K gameplay. But you will also see, that the ranking of players could be reliably divided into percentiles, that is each player would have their "glass ceiling" they cannot go above barring an extreme luck - a true sorting by the skill element of the game.

So... why do you think deploying and screening correctly is not a skill? Why do you think a GSC player knowing how to take apart screens is not a skill? A Guard players game vs GSC is won or lost based on how he deploys, but a GSC players game is won or lost based on decisions he makes during the game, trying to break his opponents defenses?

Honestly from my perspective it seems like you guys are hand waving a lot of things that are not easy to do as "not really skills". Saying "oh just screen correctly" is NOT easy to do.

Wayniac wrote:
Look at all the arguments over missions; having something like Maelstrom missions, hated as they are, means you can't pre-prepare for whatever will come as you can in ITC

This is a poor example because it's not just competitive players that hate maelstrom. Maelstrom objectives are just plain design. They're for competitive play, for casual play, and especially for narrative play. Everything about them is irredeemable . And competitive players are 100% accurate in pointing out that maelstrom objectives reduce the impact of skill by replacing it with RNG. Drawing "do the thing your army wants to do anyway, gain D3 VP" and rolling a 3 while your opponent draws "do this nearly impossible thing, gain 1 VP" is not skill. It's just having RNG hand you an advantage because RNG.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Horst wrote:
So... why do you think deploying and screening correctly is not a skill?

Because it's largely something you memorize before the game begins, not a strategy you improvise during the game in response to move and counter-move interactions with your opponent's strategy. Once you know how to do the obvious correct thing all you're doing is making sure you measure correctly and execute the correct play.

Deployment and screening are comparable to memorizing openings from chess.

The skill is in rules mastery and memorizing patterns.

They are a skill certainly but not a complex or difficult skill. Doing those things does not indicate great tactical skill. It indicates that you are good at memorizing opening patterns.

Its on the same footing to me as knowing that the 60 point model that can do on average 5.5 wounds a turn is a better deal than the 130 point model that only does 3.5 wounds a turn but has some situational ability that they slapped a 70 point tax on that I may or may not ever use in an event depending on the terrain/scenarios/etc.

It is certainly a skill, but not a deep and tactical skill.

Its also not something that at least I am hand waiving because I'm not good at it. Thats always a takeaway from a lot of people... if you aren't good at it you dismiss it as not good. But while that may be partially correct for some people, is a broad over generalization that certainly cannot cover any or even the majority of people. In this context, especially when having played a wider variety of games where there is a larger degree of skill and less reliance on stacking the odds in your favor with math.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I think what this is revealing though is a schism between the direction of rules memorization and deckbuilding etc as a skill vs those that want improvisation and on the fly thinking as a skill.

The "correct play" is not something you can easily memorize though. You need a different approach vs every army list. In the matchup bs GSC I described, what if the GSC player has 3 Vultures with punishers instead of mortars or something, in addition to flamer acolytes? Your plan may have been to screen with infantry, but now he can remove all of that infantry in a single shooting phase, so how do you screen? You need to decide which tanks you can afford to lose at that point, to protect more important assets. Yes, a lot of these decisions do have "correct" answers, but deciding what they are on the fly is not easy, and something I'd consider a skill.

There can definitely be improvised strategies in game as well, depending on what your army can and cannot do, and what your opponent chooses to do. One of my favorite 40k images is a tournament a few years back, where a Tau player infiltrated his Kroot all along the enemy board edge, blocking the enemy from bringing in reserves, and the enemy held his entire army in reserve. Tau player wins without firing a shot.

I recently played a game vs Nick Nanavati in a GT... he's a very highly ranked player. He had Tau, I had Guard. He realized mid game he could assault my tanks with riptides, preventing them from shooting, but he could fall back and shoot since his units could fly. So he made a mid game decision to charge me with Tau. I've made similar moves with Guard vs AdMech in the past throwing Hellhounds into Dunecrawlers to prevent them from firing.

There are a lot of mid game decisions that have to be made, so many that I'd argue memorization of all of them is effectively impossible, given the number of matchups. IMO being able to make the right decision mid game separates OK players from great ones, and it is not a trivial skill.

 Horst wrote:
There can definitely be improvised strategies in game as well, depending on what your army can and cannot do, and what your opponent chooses to do. One of my favorite 40k images is a tournament a few years back, where a Tau player infiltrated his Kroot all along the enemy board edge, blocking the enemy from bringing in reserves, and the enemy held his entire army in reserve. Tau player wins without firing a shot.

This just proves our point! The Tau player didn't make a brilliant strategic play, he just had better rules knowledge and got a favorable ruling from the judge in an ambiguous situation. Technically skill? I guess. But it's a low bar.

I recently played a game vs Nick Nanavati in a GT... he's a very highly ranked player. He had Tau, I had Guard. He realized mid game he could assault my tanks with riptides, preventing them from shooting, but he could fall back and shoot since his units could fly. So he made a mid game decision to charge me with Tau. I've made similar moves with Guard vs AdMech in the past throwing Hellhounds into Dunecrawlers to prevent them from firing.

If it took until mid-game to realize something so extremely obvious then maybe he isn't such a great player and the level of skill is very low?

That is target prioritization. Being able to calculate all enemy units coefficients vs your own and determining which ones to take out based on numeric odds determined through listbuilding choices also based on which one of your opponents units are going to be more damaging to yours in descending order from most damaging to least damaging.

That right there is what at least myself has been saying is the other pillar of 40k besides listbuildiing as the two primary skills of the game.

I put that for me at GT level play at about 25% of the overall package. 75% of my games played at that level were about my list choices. 25% of my games were how well I could prioritize what needed to die from turn to turn. My success rate was always also based on luck of my opponent draw. In my first GT that I top 10'd because I played eldar, I would have not done so hot if I had gotten fed a tyranid or ork player. But I knew few people played those armies and relied on space marines as my opponent, and my list was hard stacked against space marines in a tournament (little cover little terrain) environment. I went 6-0 that tournament with about 10 months of 40k experience, and that was GT level play. The following year I went 4 wins 1 loss 1 draw with same army because I got a worse draw of opponents (an ork, two nids), the ork player dealt me my first loss, and a close win took me out of top 10. I still played the game the exact same, my list just wasn't equipped to deal with those armies, because listbuiilding is a massive part of the game and I drew opponents bad that year.

The word trivial I guess can mean many things to many people. I wouldn't say that its trivial either, but neither would I say that it put me on par with a chessmaster internationally ranked.

(I'd like the game to be stepped up a couple notches so that more was viable and more decisions other than target prioritization had to be made... kind of like how a real battle goes)

 Horst wrote:


I recently played a game vs Nick Nanavati in a GT... he's a very highly ranked player. He had Tau, I had Guard. He realized mid game he could assault my tanks with riptides, preventing them from shooting, but he could fall back and shoot since his units could fly. So he made a mid game decision to charge me with Tau. I've made similar moves with Guard vs AdMech in the past throwing Hellhounds into Dunecrawlers to prevent them from firing.

If that's your barometer for what constitutes great tactical improvisation I can see why we're having the disagreements we are about what counts as skill. Just like your examples about screening, this is just a common-sense approach to play that is neither difficult to grasp or implement. I think it took most of my group about 1 game to realise how powerful charging was for shutting down shooting, especially vehicle shooting. I don't think that's some sort of elite player only move. Unusual, perhaps, but not skilful. I also note from your anecdote it appears this wasn't even part of a concerted plan on your opponent's part, but rather a realisation he came to mid-game. So this wasn't something that was even set up by your opponent as some sort of (not very) cunning trap.

 Horst wrote:


There are a lot of mid game decisions that have to be made, so many that I'd argue memorization of all of them is effectively impossible, given the number of matchups. IMO being able to make the right decision mid game separates OK players from great ones, and it is not a trivial skill.

Of course there are decisions to be made, nobody would play a completely scripted/solved game - as I wrote above, and what auticus wrote above: deployment and at least first turn is scripted based on matchup, you memorize those based on the knowledge about the game rules/factions/list archetypes, exactly like opening in chess - those are all solved situations. Then you proceed to the only interesting part of the game, around the top of turn three of 5 turn game, where script ends and further decision tree is still large enough to be considered unsolvable by typical player given time constraints, but at the end of turn three the game is usually decided already, with some players simply not aware of this fact - the game tree from that point is solvable on the fly by even mediocre chess/go/bridge player and in many, many cases even the dice gods cannot turn the tide, branches of the tree simply do not reach that far.

Shallow nature of 40K Eternal War mode gameplay lies in number of turns to play and in endgame scoring (and very illusoric nature of ITC cumulative scoring) - meaning that the match is either perfectly solvable or has a low number of uncertain but foundable solutions. There are only so much decisions in the tree. Seriously, read more about Go, Chess or Bridge and then compare sizes of game trees in those games with 40K gameplay. 40K gameplay is tiny.

And a word about Maelstrom - BRB Maelstrom is actually completely unsolvable, the best you can do is to play to the odds of drawing certain classes of cards and very broad board controll and is much harder to understand in the "deep way". In logical terms, Maelstrom is fuzzy and it can only be slightly manipulated during gameplay. It can still be manipulated a bit more during listbuilding stage. But because one can only manipulate probabilities of Maelstrom slightly it is the most hated mode of play by people who expect "a good game" to have a hard to solve but nevertheless existing solution of a single match. In Maelstrom you actually have to play it through to know how it ends and the end score does not proportionally reflect player skill. However, Maelstrom does sort players according to skill but do so only over very large number of games, a lot more than typical player plays not only at GTs but more than typical yearly total, so it is not feasible to utilize it in tournaments.

Wayniac wrote:40k is an incredibly shallow game with the illusion of a lot of skill and complexity. It's not high skill, but it's not entirely dice either. It's a far cry from what I would consider requiring a lot of skill or even deep and complex skill, however, no matter how much the competitive 40k crowd wants to pretend it does.

^ Truth!

LunarSol wrote:
Generally speaking competitive players are more aware of what the dice odds actually are and make their decisions accordingly. They're making plans based on below average results and take moments of good fortune as a freebie rather than something their plans depended on. When you really understand the dice curve and what you should expect out of them, its a lot easier to make meaningful decisions. That said, GW's stuff is far from the most skill intensive games I've played; they're also a lot less random than people think once you get it out of your head that 3's to hit, 3's to wound should succeed "most" of the time.

^ Truth!

nou wrote:

Of course there are decisions to be made, nobody would play a completely scripted/solved game - as I wrote above, and what auticus wrote above: deployment and at least first turn is scripted based on matchup, you memorize those based on the knowledge about the game rules/factions/list archetypes, exactly like opening in chess - those are all solved situations. Then you proceed to the only interesting part of the game, around the top of turn three of 5 turn game, where script ends and further decision tree is still large enough to be considered unsolvable by typical player given time constraints, but at the end of turn three the game is usually decided already, with some players simply not aware of this fact - the game tree from that point is solvable on the fly by even mediocre chess/go/bridge player and in many, many cases even the dice gods cannot turn the tide, branches of the tree simply do not reach that far.

Well, it's a 6 turn game not a 5 turn game, and I also disagree that you memorize matchups and then it's a "solved" situation... going first or second, along with the terrain on the board and deployment mode, will drastically change the situation, so much so that I don't feel it's reasonable to say a person who builds a list and goes to a tournament has sat down prior to the tournament and memorized all possible matchups on all possible boards so that they don't have to figure it out on the fly. I'm willing to bet I have more (recent) tournament experience than most people in this thread, and I can say about half my games are NOT decided by turn 3, that it has often come down to the moves made in turns 5 or 6 that decide who wins and loses. The other half of the games, it's either a bad matchup for one of the two people, or seriously bad luck, and that does indeed impact winning or losing, so it's not always 100% skill based.

I'm not sure what you guys are actually complaining about though (other than the competitive mindset taking over players in your local groups, which to me indicates that they just like that mode more and isn't really a problem). Yes, 40k could have more in it to make it a "deeper" game. Is it possible to include even MORE decisions, when you have an hour and 15 minutes to play your game? (assuming you're using ITC rules with a 2:30 timed round, you should get half that time to make your moves). If you make the game more complicated with deeper decisions required, you won't have time to finish a game. You could make the army size smaller to add more depth, but I like using larger armies, it offers you more options in list building (which I really enjoy, and yes I concede that this is partly like a CCG where if you mess this phase up you will do poorly). I don't see this as a negative. The game obviously works as a competitive game since it's used that way, and for at least the time I've played it (since 4th edition) it's been pretty much the same... building a list is a very important part of the game and always has been.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Slipspace wrote:

 Horst wrote:


I recently played a game vs Nick Nanavati in a GT... he's a very highly ranked player. He had Tau, I had Guard. He realized mid game he could assault my tanks with riptides, preventing them from shooting, but he could fall back and shoot since his units could fly. So he made a mid game decision to charge me with Tau. I've made similar moves with Guard vs AdMech in the past throwing Hellhounds into Dunecrawlers to prevent them from firing.

If that's your barometer for what constitutes great tactical improvisation I can see why we're having the disagreements we are about what counts as skill. Just like your examples about screening, this is just a common-sense approach to play that is neither difficult to grasp or implement. I think it took most of my group about 1 game to realise how powerful charging was for shutting down shooting, especially vehicle shooting. I don't think that's some sort of elite player only move. Unusual, perhaps, but not skilful. I also note from your anecdote it appears this wasn't even part of a concerted plan on your opponent's part, but rather a realisation he came to mid-game. So this wasn't something that was even set up by your opponent as some sort of (not very) cunning trap.

Well, Nick hadn't played Tau very much, so it was a new army to him, and while I've played against them a lot, I've never had anyone assault me with their battlesuits. It makes a lot of sense, but Tau are a shooting army, most people play them as such. It's an example of thinking on the fly, in a way that might not be expected. Sure, it seems obvious, but hell a lot of things seem obvious in hindsight, and managing to see it when it matters is what counts. I've had instances where I declare I'm going to swing with a unit first, then my opponent uses the CP interrupt ability to attack next and kills a valuable unit. The obvious thing is I should have been more careful with which unit I choose to fight first with... but I missed it. I've had instances where I choose to use a stratagem, which gives my opponent a chance to get a CP back, giving him enough CP to use a powerful ability I thought he couldn't... I shouldn't have used that stratagem to give him the chance. It's obvious in hindsight, but in the middle of a timed game keeping track of everything is not easy, and it's definitely part of the skill set 40k requires. Sure, 40k doesn't require a ton of "tactical" skill to play, like, "oh I need to flank here!", it requires knowing rules and keeping track of abilities. So what, that's still a skill, and if you want different skills to be required for your game play a different game.

I think this side track discussion launched because someone mentioned that the game has a lot of skill required and that people were mistaken or just didn't know how to play properly so were saying that the game requires no skill.

What we have now differentiated is for posters what is and is not considered "a lot of skill".

 Horst wrote:

nou wrote:

It's obvious in hindsight, but in the middle of a timed game keeping track of everything is not easy, and it's definitely part of the skill set 40k requires. Sure, 40k doesn't require a ton of "tactical" skill to play, like, "oh I need to flank here!", it requires knowing rules and keeping track of abilities. So what, that's still a skill, and if you want different skills to be required for your game play a different game.

I think knowing the rules and abilities isn't even the minimum of what makes something competitive and is expected of anybody playing anything. And 40k doesn't have that big of a rules/mechanics burden to remember when compared to wm.

Irk, I think we've reached a divergent point here, where you simply do not like the game, and I do, and no further discussion is possible. Saying 40k doesn't have a big rules/mechanics burden is disingenuous, when there are literally 90+ rules sources for this game, and to pretend otherwise is just being intentionally obtuse.

Having read, but not felt like heavily participating in the debate; I don't think anyone is really arguing that its an extremely skill intensive game, just that its not particularly fair to dismiss every decision making point as trivial to get back to the "no skill" side of the argument. Particularly true when many of the things are being dismissed as "obvious" choices simply because the person dismissing them has simply played the game enough to develop the skill. FWIW, I rate it as something of a 30/50/20 skill/list/luck sort of game. Strategems may bump that to 40/50/10, but those numbers aren't exactly a hard science. I'd argue against anyone that claims its a highly skilled game; but I think it does a great disservice to dismiss what's there the way I've seen over the last couple of pages.

The argument about whether 40k is a skillful game or not largely goes back to what this thread is about: a bunch of competitive players acting like tools to non-competitive players. It seems that they believe this behavior is justified because they try harder at the game and are more successful at it, therefore the way they play it is the One True Way. But if the game is not a skillful game, then they think higher of themselves than is justified, so they end up just being jerks for no reason.

 Horst wrote:
Irk, I think we've reached a divergent point here, where you simply do not like the game, and I do, and no further discussion is possible. Saying 40k doesn't have a big rules/mechanics burden is disingenuous, when there are literally 90+ rules sources for this game, and to pretend otherwise is just being intentionally obtuse.

I like 40k, I just try to be fair with it. And I said when compared to warmachine, which has a lot more abilities and rules interactions than 40k. A lot of stuff in 40k is also kind of the same.

 Sqorgar wrote:
The argument about whether 40k is a skillful game or not largely goes back to what this thread is about: a bunch of competitive players acting like tools to non-competitive players. It seems that they believe this behavior is justified because they try harder at the game and are more successful at it, therefore the way they play it is the One True Way. But if the game is not a skillful game, then they think higher of themselves than is justified, so they end up just being jerks for no reason.

The non-competitive players are just as guilty of stirring the pot though, making blanket statements like "it's not a skillful game" (which I and others disagree with, which led to discussion of what exactly constitutes a skill). Neither side is really innocent in this, though from my perspective I see a lot more non-competitive players leveling criticism at competitive players than the other way around. Like, a guy posts an army lists, and gets responses like, "that's cheesy", or "I hate people who play X unit". Hell, it happens at tournaments. At my most recent GT, I had a list containing a single Knight, and some guy walks up to me and unprompted says he hates anyone who brings those things. Never mind I was doing something completely experimental with a house very few people use, and was 1-2 in the tournament so far, a "casual" player who just goes to tournaments "for fun" just rants about how he hates people who play "cheesy" knights.

I maintain the answer to the original question, about why competitive players hate casual players, is because casual players hate competitive players just as much, and really no reconciliation is possible.

 Horst wrote:
The non-competitive players are just as guilty of stirring the pot though...

Ah, the old "I know you are, but what am I" defense...

I maintain the answer to the original question, about why competitive players hate casual players, is because casual players hate competitive players just as much, and really no reconciliation is possible.

Again, we return to Warmachine, a game which had a community that was almost exclusively competitive players (and overwhelmingly hostile towards casual and non-competitive players, to the point where the non-competitive players ALL went and played other games or otherwise stayed the hell away from Warmachine's public facing community). Why were the competitive players so hostile to casual players when the casual players had no voice and no power? It's like beating up a handicapped kid. And where is Warmachine now? Those competitive players really turned out in force to defend the game in its darkest hour, didn't they

This isn't about being nice. When competitive players get their way 100% of the time, games die. This is about what's best for the long term health and survival of the game, and really, no matter how you slice that cake, the answer is always going to come up with "competitive players are bad". Bad for the game, bad for the community, and if they are bad for the game and the community, then that means they are bad for the industry.

 Sqorgar wrote:

 Horst wrote:
The non-competitive players are just as guilty of stirring the pot though...

Ah, the old "I know you are, but what am I" defense...

I maintain the answer to the original question, about why competitive players hate casual players, is because casual players hate competitive players just as much, and really no reconciliation is possible.

Again, we return to Warmachine, a game which had a community that was almost exclusively competitive players (and overwhelmingly hostile towards casual and non-competitive players, to the point where the non-competitive players ALL went and played other games or otherwise stayed the hell away from Warmachine's public facing community). Why were the competitive players so hostile to casual players when the casual players had no voice and no power? It's like beating up a handicapped kid. And where is Warmachine now? Those competitive players really turned out in force to defend the game in its darkest hour, didn't they

This isn't about being nice. When competitive players get their way 100% of the time, games die. This is about what's best for the long term health and survival of the game, and really, no matter how you slice that cake, the answer is always going to come up with "competitive players are bad". Bad for the game, bad for the community, and if they are bad for the game and the community, then that means they are bad for the industry.

Yep, and this entirely proves my point, so thank you. I disagree with literally everything you've said, except the parts about war machine, which I have no idea about because i'm not interested in it at all.

 LunarSol wrote:
Having read, but not felt like heavily participating in the debate; I don't think anyone is really arguing that its an extremely skill intensive game, just that its not particularly fair to dismiss every decision making point as trivial to get back to the "no skill" side of the argument. Particularly true when many of the things are being dismissed as "obvious" choices simply because the person dismissing them has simply played the game enough to develop the skill. FWIW, I rate it as something of a 30/50/20 skill/list/luck sort of game. Strategems may bump that to 40/50/10, but those numbers aren't exactly a hard science. I'd argue against anyone that claims its a highly skilled game; but I think it does a great disservice to dismiss what's there the way I've seen over the last couple of pages.

If I'm not mistaken, the only person who stated that things are "obvious" or "trivial" in pejorative way was Peregrine and I doubt anyone in this thread treat his posts as serious discussion attempt.

On the lighter side - there is one "non exact" metric we can measure the amount of skill involved in a game: after 7.5 hours long day of 40K the parts of my body that hurt me the most are back and feet. After 7.5 hrs of Bridge the part that hurts me the most is my brain. But to stress it out last one time (if what you wrote above is adressed at me) - I have never argued that 40K has no skill involved whatsoever, only that compared to the most skill involving intelectual games there are the amount of skill in 40K is rather small.

Sqorgar is right, though he may be overstating it a bit.

I distinguished above between competitive players and tryhards, and I think that is important. Not all competitive players are tryhards, but some are. With my Warmachine experience, I would say the issue is threefold and it is more about things inherent to competitive play than stereotypes about competitive players being mean.

1. Competitive play attracts tryhards. That is not to say that all competitive players are tryhards, (I’ve had more fun losing to someone who is the closest thing Warmachine has to a world champion than I have had winning against tryhards) but some are and they come out of the woodwork when competitive play is dominant. And it only takes one to ruin your day.

2. Competitive play encourages some behaviour that is not conducive to growing a community. Competitive players want to practice with optimized lists at the tournament standard points level. While some are willing to “shut it off” for a night for the benefit of the community, to them, playing a lower points game against a newbie means sacrificing a tournament practice game (that is, unless they like stroking their ego by noobstomping). Competitive players are less likely to play painted or use attractive terrain, because they need to stay up to date with the latest hotness in the meta and use their painting time to practice or theorize about the game. In short, too much focus on competitive play can create a community that doesn’t attract new players or ends up being somewhat hostile.

3. Competitive play can cause burnout, as one has to keep expending effort to stay on top. So, if a focus on competitive play is preventing new players from getting into the game and then causing burnout and attrition among experienced players, communities dry up and the game dies off. This is the challenge that a lot of Warmachine communities are going through right now (though I personally still love the game and am trying to forge a more casual basementmachine community).

None of this is to say that competitive players are bad people. Yes, some are tryhards, but some are good. However, if competitive play ends up subsuming everything else, it can be bad for a community and bad for the game, so it needs to be kept in check.

nou wrote:

If I'm not mistaken, the only person who stated that things are "obvious" or "trivial" in pejorative way was Peregrine and I doubt anyone in this thread treat his posts as serious discussion attempt.

There have been a good number of "that's not really a skill" kind of comments. Not necessarily pejorative but dismissive. My point is that the people arguing in favor of the skill in the game aren't really pressing the idea that its a hugely skill based game; just that there's a lot more decision making than the other side of the argument is willing to admit.