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So, something I'd note here is that units have a limited potential. That and the potential you have is limited by the aggregate potential of your units.

The problem with this thinking is with the object of the game. 2/3rd of the missions are objectives, and it is possible (i've done it more than once) to kill very little of your opponent and win with 1 or 2 models on the table. In football objectives, if I have one thing contest and I have 1 scoring model on my objective, I win, regardless if he has fifty billion leman russ tanks in the wrong place.

That's usually my main strategy (denial style, minimize damage and defense, and force the IG player to move against me by killing his mobile elments first) against imperial guard anyways, so maybe that's not so surprising that's happened.

scuddman wrote:And he said, "The key is poise in difficult situations, to have the ability to play through rough and difficult spots out of your control."

Sums it up nicely.

scuddman wrote:

So, something I'd note here is that units have a limited potential. That and the potential you have is limited by the aggregate potential of your units.

The problem with this thinking is with the object of the game.

Well, then let me expand that.

The power you have to take and hold objectives in objectives games and to kill whole enemy units in KP games has a limited potential. This potential is limited to the aggregate of the potentials of the units you have on the board.

For example, you have the potential to tank shock contest an objective if you have a tank on the board, but you don't if you don't. You can increase the odds that you still have a tank on the board, but your opponent is simultaneously working to reduce those odds. In the end, you can not completely make it go one way or the other, and the dice eventually are the only deciding factor of if there's a tank on the table or not.

The less you have on the board, the less options you have - the less power you have to make your tactics affect the outcome of the game. Unfortunately, the amount you have on the board is ultimately determined by luck.

Yes, things like "poise" are helpful rather than hurtful, but to only look at those things that you have control over at the expense of those things you don't have control over breeds a false hope that you have control over everything.

Redbeard wrote:

FYI, double-sixes with a SAG removes the target from the game. The land raiders don't explode, they simple cease to be, along with their contents.

Was that changed by an Errata or FAQed at some point in time? Because the codex states:

Codex: Orks wrote:
Any model hit by the gun this turn is removed from play, Vehicles take an automatic penetrating hit.

Seems like you could argue that a vehicle is a model and is therefore removed regardless of penetrating hits happening, but I always assumed that they stay, apart from that autopen.

Ailaros wrote:Unfortunately, the amount you have on the board is ultimately determined by luck.

This is where I have to disagree with you. There are a lot of things you can do to survive even the hottest dice. Knowing when to stop playing normally and when to flip it into survival mode to preserve enough objective grabbing potential is a skill unto itself.

Now if the mission is annihilation, that's harder. But with the new 3 objective format you will almost always have something you can play for.

Well, then let me expand that.

The power you have to take and hold objectives in objectives games and to kill whole enemy units in KP games has a limited potential. This potential is limited to the aggregate of the potentials of the units you have on the board.

For example, you have the potential to tank shock contest an objective if you have a tank on the board, but you don't if you don't. You can increase the odds that you still have a tank on the board, but your opponent is simultaneously working to reduce those odds. In the end, you can not completely make it go one way or the other, and the dice eventually are the only deciding factor of if there's a tank on the table or not.

The less you have on the board, the less options you have - the less power you have to make your tactics affect the outcome of the game. Unfortunately, the amount you have on the board is ultimately determined by luck.

Yes, things like "poise" are helpful rather than hurtful, but to only look at those things that you have control over at the expense of those things you don't have control over breeds a false hope that you have control over everything.

This isn't right either. It isn't necessarily enough to have a tank on the board. The tank has to be mobile and in position to tank shock, but the way deployment is, the tank rarely (pretty much never) starts in the optimal position. Your movement of the tank is not random, and directly affects the game. On top of that, it is necessary to move the tank into position to do so.

While it is true that the less you have on the board, the less options you have, you still lhave some options.
The only exception is the case on the first turn your opponent completely tables your army and gives you no units before you get to go. As long as you have 1 or 2 in an objective mission, you still have the potential to win.

I'll use a chess adage to illustate: The position of a piece is more powerful and useful than how powerful the piece is. Just like in 40k, it is possible to win with 2 pieces, even though you didn't capture a single one of the enemy's pieces, because you just "happen" to be in a position to checkmate.

This is why I like objectives more than killpoints or kill each other kind of missions. Position in 40k is mostly determined by player choices, and position is how you win objective missions. It's not about how much you kill, it's about what you have left and where it is.

Witzkatz wrote:

Redbeard wrote:

FYI, double-sixes with a SAG removes the target from the game. The land raiders don't explode, they simple cease to be, along with their contents.

Was that changed by an Errata or FAQed at some point in time? Because the codex states:

Codex: Orks wrote:
Any model hit by the gun this turn is removed from play, Vehicles take an automatic penetrating hit.

Seems like you could argue that a vehicle is a model and is therefore removed regardless of penetrating hits happening, but I always assumed that they stay, apart from that autopen.

Hrm, I was unaware of this. I don't think I've ever played with a SAG. Although, you're right, a vehicle is still a model. Lovely writing by GW as always.

I know. I just realized the discrepancy between those lines...making new thread in YMDC so there's no more disturbance here.

ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:

Ailaros wrote:Unfortunately, the amount you have on the board is ultimately determined by luck.

This is where I have to disagree with you. There are a lot of things you can do to survive even the hottest dice. Knowing when to stop playing normally and when to flip it into survival mode to preserve enough objective grabbing potential is a skill unto itself.

As far as I can tell, the only thing that you can do to guarantee the survival of something is to keep it completely out of line of sight. Even then, this still requires your opponent not to have any deepstrikers or outflankers or barrage weapons.

I mean, a lascannon has a 1 in 6 chance of causing a penetration per hit regardless of player skill. The player can move the land raider into cover to improve his odds, but it's still a 1 in 12 chance.

No matter what you do, the dice are ultimately the deciding factor.

scuddman wrote:While it is true that the less you have on the board, the less options you have, you still have some options.

That's exactly what I said...

Ailaros wrote:After all, if you only had a single guardsmen on the table, regardless of skill, there is only so much you can do. In this case, player skill would be a relatively insignificant factor, as a bad player and a good player aren't going to be able to make much difference about how they use that one dude on the table. Yes, a better player is more likely to make closer to 100% usefulness out of that guardsman than the noob, but the limiting factor is that you still only have one guardsman on the table. He is not going to win a 1000 point game by himself.

Good players may be able to squeeze a higher percentage of power out of what they have on the table, but it's die rolls that actually determine what you have on the table.

Well luck is a massive part of the game because once my hammerhead shot down a stormraven first turn and hasn't done it since that game.

Ailaros wrote:

I mean, if you get shot at turn 1, and half your army falls back off the board, those units are gone. Tactics can not replace them, or the serious potential lost when they went away. Of course, this is an extreme example, as I don't think anyone would assume you could pull off victory with 1/2 your army missing unless you were playing against a much worse opponent, but this extreme points to the rule - when bad luck limits your options, your options are limited. When bad luck destroys stuff, those things are gone. Talk about some sort of infinite complexity if you will (which I have yet to see why we should), but if you get 100% of your army blown off the board turn 1, I really fail to see how tactics make the difference. Likewise, lesser luck would still have a lesser impact, but the impact would never go away.

I think the dispute in this thread comes down to this, though: Was it really due to luck that you lost those units? Or was it due to poor strategy/tactics?

Talking in abstracts like this does nothing but cloud up the issue and make it arguable from either side. Can you describe for me an in-game situation where you lose 1/2 your army in the shooting phase of turn 1? If so, and you give us the details, I'm pretty sure we can determine whether or not it was due to tactics or luck.

For what it's worth, I'm in the middle on this issue at the moment. Both sides have persuasive arguments, but discussing abstractions is actively detrimental to analyzing this aspect of 40k. We should talk about what actually happens at the table, or we shouldn't talk at all.

Hans Chung-Otterson wrote:Was it really due to luck that you lost those units? Or was it due to poor strategy/tactics?

Well, it was luck that determined whether the units were lost or not. A die roll determined if a model was wounded, and a die roll determined the results of a cover save.

The only thing that tactics can do is allow you to manipulate the odds. If you're in cover, the odds are longer, if your opponent is in flamer/double-tap/melta range, those odds are shorter. You can use tactics to manipulate the odds, but the end results are still determined by die rolls.

Ailaros wrote:As far as I can tell, the only thing that you can do to guarantee the survival of something is to keep it completely out of line of sight. Even then, this still requires your opponent not to have any deepstrikers or outflankers or barrage weapons.

You can go out of LOS, you can get in cover, you can go to ground, you assault with tie up units, you can harass and distract with not important units, you can try and draw your opponent out of position.

I'll give you a couple examples:

In our game, I pressed up with my CCS. They were doing nothing for me, the plasma shots on guardsmen in cover were next to worthless. I knew you would eventually get to something, getting to the CCS losses me a relatively unimportant unit and then you would most likely be bunched up for flamer madness. I put my CCS in a position that made it easier to get to hoping you wouldn’t try for the stuff behind. The same type of leading/distraction can be done in survival mode to keep pressure off important units.

In a recent tournament game against poding wolves, the objective I was playing for was to get your hq to the center of the table. I reserved everything, he poded with one unit in each quarter (I assume he was playing for table quarters). When I moved on from reserve I move on the extreme corners of my DZ (and outflanked with vendettas on the extreme corners of his DZ). He shifted his stuff towards the corners which allowed my HQ (which thankfully came in very late) to fly up the middle completely unharrassed. Same types of things can be done to protect units in survival mode.

The local chaos guy I struggle with like crazy often hides in cover and goes to ground until 5. He runs to objectives, I come up, if it goes to turn 6 he is now in my face with a lot more of his forces than if he had pushed through no man’s land earlier.

Identify what units are really important to you, get them where they need to be, and the rest is all just running interference to that end.

And as far as the deep strikers etc, when you flip into survival your priority targets change. Go after things that are going to mess up your survival plans.

I think this can be summed up easily as:

Part of playing 40k competatively is risk management. Highly skilled players are better at risk management, which minimizes but doesn't eliminate the effects of luck.

Heffling wrote:I think this can be summed up easily as:

Part of playing 40k competatively is risk management. Highly skilled players are better at risk management, which minimizes but doesn't eliminate the effects of luck.

Agreed. But some will say even if you manage it, the risks will eventually bite you, and then there is nothing you can do. Or the bad luck happens before you have a chance to manage it. I have not personally experienced luck so bad that in hindsight there was nothing I could have done. I suppose it is possible, and I suppose it must have happened somewhere sometime. But I think if you attribute more than .001% of your losses to luck you're missing out on some opportunities to get better.

ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:You can go out of LOS, you can get in cover, you can go to ground, you assault with tie up units, you can harass and distract with not important units, you can try and draw your opponent out of position.

Yes, you can lengthen the odds, but you can not eliminate them.

Also, don't forget that 40k is a competitive game. While you are trying to shorten your odds, your opponent is trying to lengthen them. If your success in how well YOU mitigated luck was what was important, you'd be playing solitaire, not 40k.

Because of the nature of the game, you are always going to have to be doing certain things where there is no riskless option. Even if you park a tank completely out of LOS, for example, you're still risking that your army doesn't need the support of that unit that turn, for example.

There is no perfect decision, and there is no decision that does not require risk.

To say that skill is always the most determining factor, you have to believe that risk is always infinitely mitigatable. Said another way, in order for skill to always matter more than luck, luck is something which must be controllable. In the end, though, it is not. No matter what you do, it is always the dice that will have the final, determining word.

So far, to believe otherwise appears to me that one would have to deny that luck exists in 40k at all.

Ailaros wrote:There is no perfect decision

I just disagree with this statement. I guess it depends on the definition of perfect, but I think in almost every situation there is a best decision. It’s not always clear or obvious but it’s there.

Ailaros wrote:
To say that skill is always the most determining factor, you have to believe that risk is always infinitely mitigatable. Said another way, in order for skill to always matter more than luck, luck is something which must be controllable. In the end, though, it is not. No matter what you do, it is always the dice that will have the final, determining word.

So far, to believe otherwise appears to me that one would have to deny that luck exists in 40k at all.

Nobody is taking it to that extreme. I just said its possible that luck could completely cost you the game. But this is how I see a game.

Something happens, you make the decision that gives you the best chance of winning.
Something else happens, you make the decision that gives you the best chance of winning
Something else happens, you make the decision that gives you the best chance of winning

You keep making the best decisions and the odds of luck truly keeping you from winning the game are so small I would say it has never happened to the vast majority of us.

Just my philosophy on it, but I have a very empowering mentality about everything in life. If you take credit for your successes I think you need to take credit for losses too. But that’s more self help than 40k .

ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:You keep making the best decisions and the odds of luck truly keeping you from winning the game are so small I would say it has never happened to the vast majority of us.

Indeed, I think this is the core of it.

Both players make the best decisions they are able to manage risk as best as possible. As two players come closer in skill level, the amount that they manage risk is relatively less important. Also, the higher in skill level one gets, the less benefit to risk management they gain (changing catastrophe from being on a 1/2 chance to a 1/20 chance is huge, but making it from a 1/20 to 1/40 is less so, and 1/40 to 1/60 even less so).

The question here isn't "does skill matter less the more skilled you become?". The question is "at what point does luck become more significant than skill?". You're assuming that the "blue line" is practically at the bottom of the graph. Skill will always be more of a determiner until the two players become perfect. As that can never happen, skill will always be more important than luck.

I can't see why this is the more accurate way of seeing things. In the end, regardless of risk mitigation, the actual end results are determined by the way that dice roll. In the end, the % player skill really only determines the % that they squeeze out of their list. The perfect player will get the absolute most out of their list, but that does not mean that a perfect player will win every game.

While the skill level determines how much you can squeeze out of your units on the field, it is ultimately luck which determines which units you have on the field. You can only work with what you have, and what you have is determined by the individual die rolls that determine if things survive or not.

As such, I really can't see how luck is a "small" effector. To me, it seems the "core". It is not luck that effects the outcome of skill, it is skill that effects the outcome of luck.

When the central mechanic of a game is rolling dice, I don't understand how it could be other.

My following opinion is not based from this thread, as I haven't read it all (time constraints at time of posting).

Luck affects Everything. Even in the tinest speck, it affects it. Otherwise everybody would blame something else that wasn't luck if something bad happened instead of saying "That was unlucky"

In 40k, you have luck. Why? Beccuase there is a cube with 6 numbers on it dictating what you're going to get, that's why. You can reduce your reliance on luck, take lots of dice or increase the odds of getting what you're after. It's still luck in the end. All those 2+ rolls can still be 1's at some point, and you will get them. Trying to get around this won't stop it. You can roll 1000 dice and I can guarntee that one of those will be a 1.

I'd assume more... competitive lists try and reduce the reliance on luck to a very fine point. Meching up, taking protective upgrades and powerful guns, units with good solid rules and the like. It's still luck when you get a 1 on that Difficult Terrain test for your transport and it breaks down just when you didn't need it to.

But you can prove that is wrong.

If you roll nothing but 1's, and your opponent rolls nothing but 6's, you will lose the game. Try it some time. Short of your opponent being so completely inept that they never even try anything, you're going to lose all your models, in as many shots as it takes your opponent to roll them.

Such rolling, while absolutely an extreme case, must be considered one possible scenario. In other words, the impact of luck on games is provably greater than 0%.

So, call the impact of luck on the game X. The impact of all the player decisions on the game (list building, in-game choices, and so on), is 100-X. We can call this Y (as in X+y = 100).

But Y is made up of two components, player 1's skill, and player 2's skill.

Y = (a-b).

X + (a-b) = 100

But, if A and B are equally skilled....

X + 0 = 100

X, the impact of luck, is the only thing that determines who wins the game.

And, if A and B are pretty close...

X + (small delta) = 100

Then X is still representing a large percentage of the component of the game.

Even if you add some extra mathy bits, such as X + 5(a-b) = 100, equally skilled players still find that luck accounts for 100% of their game results.

The skill level difference between the two players has to get significantly large before the impact of luck starts to fade away.

Right, and in the larger sense what I'm getting at is that, because skill has diminishing return (the same amount of time and effort for the same increase in skill will have less of an impact the higher it goes), there eventually becomes this point where the effect of different skill level of the two players is so low, regardless of how much more skill one has than the other (assuming they're both high enough), that the differences between skill becomes less of a factor. The difference in actual risk mitigation between a "level 1" 40k player and a "level 10" 40k player will be very pronounced, while the difference between a "level 40" and a "level 50" will be much less so, not just because the ratio is smaller, but also because you get diminishing return from each level achieved.

Which then also makes skill less of a difference as per the above.

Ailaros wrote:
The question here isn't "does skill matter less the more skilled you become?". The question is "at what point does luck become more significant than skill?".

I actually see it a different way. The question is more, 'how much effect can your skill have on the game, and to what extent can it overcome luck?'

Luck is a part of any competition, sport, or game. Some in this thread have said that luck is less a part of sports than other games, but that's not so. Luck is, in effect, random events outside your control, and there are tons of those in sports. Lots and lots. But in sports and games that involve a lot of skill, the skills involved are much larger parts of the equation. There are innumerable physical skills involved in sports, as well as decision-making, analysis, and so forth. Even competitive video games require physical skills. These factors thus usually make up far more of the equation that determines winning or losing than luck. Luck plays a part, sometimes a large part, but generally speaking the skills involved and the execution thereof determine the winner.

Something such as 40K has no physical skills. Neither does chess, of course, yet chess is a very deep game and difficult to master, because there are so many possible permutations arising from each move, and each player makes many moves over the course of a game, increasing the permutations that need to be analysed exponentially. 40K does not. Yes, there is lots of variety in situations and armies and so on, but a player doesn't do all that much over the course of a game, not compared to other sports or games.

Consider that the skills involved in 40K are essentially decision-making, analysis, and an element of vision and creativity. That's basically it. These are important skills, to be sure, and can be difficult to master. But there aren't that many things to do in the game that affect things. A 40K game lasts 5, 6 turns. You don't do much on your opponents turn except eat pizza and trash talk. You thus have five or six 'situations' to analyse, ie. the situations at the start of your turns, and during setup. You then make ten, twenty decisions or so each turn, roll the dice and check the outcome. That's it. That's really not a lot of opportunities for skills to affect a game, not when compared to a sport, which involves hundreds to thousands of micro-decisions and the execution of physical skills to accompany those decisions. So while your skills can make a large difference in the outcome, they really don't make as much of a difference as you think. There's just not enough skill-based events during a game of 40K for them to have that effect.

Take, for example, blackjack or poker. These are heavily luck-based. Yet there are also skills involved, and some are so good at these skills that they win again and again, almost always, despite the heavy element of luck. The reason they are able to use those skills, though, is because there are dozens, hundreds of hands, and they use those skills to come out ahead at the end. It doesn't matter how skilled you are at blackjack or poker - you get dealt a bad hand, you are very unlikely to win that hand. That's okay, though, because losing those hands and minimising the losses, while counting cards or watching tells and waiting for the moment to come out ahead are the real skills in those games. The point is that if you play the best poker player in the world for one hand, luck determines who wins. You play him over hundreds of hands, or hundreds of skill-based events, as it were, and he slaughters you, because there are enough of these events for his skill to make the difference.

List-building, of course, is another skill. In this way competitive 40K is actually a lot more like, say, competitive Magic: the Gathering than a sport. There aren't that many skills involved in a game of Magic. You judge some probabilities based on your deck, you react to cards you have and what your opponent plays, and so the game goes. The list/deck building is the larger part of the game. Competitive 40K is similar, especially in the way 'competitive' lists are built. I don't know a ton about M:tG, but from what I've seen and been told, competitive decks are generally of a style that executes a particular gimmick/plan and tries to win regardless of what the opponent has or does, ie. by making the opponent as irrelevant and possible. Competitive 40K lists are similar - all the 'power' lists out there are designed with a specific gimmick/strategy in mind, and attempt to execute that irrespective of the opponent. This has the added advantage of minimising some of the aforementioned skills, removing some of the need for analysis, vision, and decision-making because what your opponent is doing becomes less relevant.

In short, I don't think the real question is about whether or not 40K is heavily luck based. It has a lot of luck in it, but there are skills there, and a skilled player can win again and again. The real issue is that 40K is not a very deep game, and not a great avenue of competition, because there aren't that many skill-based events over the course of a game where skill can make a difference. Winning almost all of the time is less about in-game, tactical skill, and more about gaming the game, as it were. In other words, about playing the game in such a way that you render your opponent as irrelevant and helpless as possible, by taking a strong list that has a clear path to victory and dominates at that path as well as it can. Tactical skills make a difference in 40K. Skill differentials make a difference. But they don't make anywhere near the difference they do in sports or more competitive games.

Redbeard wrote:<<Excellent Post>>The skill level difference between the two players has to get significantly large before the impact of luck starts to fade away.

I wonder if you could quantify the skill element even further given two known lists within relatively few 'tactical' options to actually solve for the percentage impact skill can have on the game given "average" dice rolls, and 1 or 2 standard deviations out. Doing so you could actually "prove" some unit combinations are easier or harder to play than others (requiring more/less skill).

For a rough example, 5 TH/SS Terminators versus 5 PF/SB Terminators. Each unit can move 6", run 1-6", and assault 6" if they haven't run. The PF/SB Terms have the advantage at range. The TH/SS Terminators have the advantage in CC.

If the game proceeds for the 5 turns necessary for the PF/SB Terms to shoot to death enough of the AssTerms that they survive the assault, they win. If the AssTerms can close to the assault before that time, they will win. "Skill" would be the difference between those scenarios, and the impact of "luck" can be shown via how many standard deviations from the norm 'skill' can compensate for before either player reaches a threshold where victory is significantly more likely.

Redbeard wrote:

But, if A and B are equally skilled....

X + 0 = 100

X, the impact of luck, is the only thing that determines who wins the game.

And, if A and B are pretty close...

X + (small delta) = 100

Then X is still representing a large percentage of the component of the game.

Even if you add some extra mathy bits, such as X + 5(a-b) = 100, equally skilled players still find that luck accounts for 100% of their game results.

The skill level difference between the two players has to get significantly large before the impact of luck starts to fade away.

That's true, but the scenario of two players being exactly equally skilled is immensely unlikely. We aren't talking about the chances of two players being exactly the same height. Even in 40K, there are a lot of elements that go into this broad term of 'skill'. A lot of the posts in this thread talk about 'skill' as if it's a numerical quantity like height. That's just not the case - it's a multifactorial set of spectra that's almost impossible to quantify.

What does this 40K 'skill' rating involve? List making? If so, do 'equally skilled' players come up with exactly the same list, since they are equal in skill? Decision making? How do you quantify decision making? Minimising mistakes? If a player makes a mistake due to the influence of a random event outside his control (eg. a basketball player misses a free throw due to a random camera flash going off in his face), is that bad skill, bad luck, or both?

sourclams wrote:

Redbeard wrote:<<Excellent Post>>The skill level difference between the two players has to get significantly large before the impact of luck starts to fade away.

I wonder if you could quantify the skill element even further given two known lists within relatively few 'tactical' options to actually solve for the percentage impact skill can have on the game given "average" dice rolls, and 1 or 2 standard deviations out. Doing so you could actually "prove" some unit combinations are easier or harder to play than others (requiring more/less skill).

For a rough example, 5 TH/SS Terminators versus 5 PF/SB Terminators. Each unit can move 6", run 1-6", and assault 6" if they haven't run. The PF/SB Terms have the advantage at range. The TH/SS Terminators have the advantage in CC.

If the game proceeds for the 5 turns necessary for the PF/SB Terms to shoot to death enough of the AssTerms that they survive the assault, they win. If the AssTerms can close to the assault before that time, they will win. "Skill" would be the difference between those scenarios, and the impact of "luck" can be shown via how many standard deviations from the norm 'skill' can compensate for before either player reaches a threshold where victory is significantly more likely.

If you could figure that out, you would have a glorious career ahead of you as a game designer.

Way back when I worked for a video game company as a designer (RTS), we would use what math processes we could to balance units----then we would run scenarios of likely engagements v. other units----basically try to assign each unit an OCON number. Over contribution versus expense (Unit cost, build time, etc). It was very difficult to do---and while math certainly helped form a root to build from, countless other environmental (AI pathing, lag time, etc) would influence/skew the results. For the most part though, no surprises.

If you could apply that result to 40k in a structured test environment----(specific scenario, point cost, swap 1st turn, etc) and kept track of the units contribution via weighted scales (points killed---amount of fire absorbed---scoring objective, etc)-----you could, in theory, over many many games----develop an OCON for units as well.

Once you had the OCON for each unit in a given army----then you could start weighting the armies to determine what skill level was required to get victory-----over many, many games to prevent outliers from ruining your results.





Or you could just guess at the costs based on previous armies, release the book and say "oh I didn't think of that" when people take lots of Vendettas and Razorbacks.

Relic_OMO wrote:...The real issue is that 40K is not a very deep game, and not a great avenue of competition, because there aren't that many skill-based events over the course of a game where skill can make a difference.

This is a good way of putting it.

I would note, though, that comparing 40k to poker isn't the best analogy. Skill in poker is based on psychology. The only reason it works is because you don't know what your opponent's randomly determined stuff (the cards) is. In 40k, both players have full access to information about the random part of the game (both players see the die rolls).

Relic_OMO wrote:That's true, but the scenario of two players being exactly equally skilled is immensely unlikely.

No, but that's not the point. The point is that the amount that skill matters is relative to the inequality in skill. If you have two players that are nearly, but not exactly equal in skill, luck would play a majority, but not exclusionary role. The farther apart they get, the less other things (such as luck) matter.

Relic_OMO wrote:What does this 40K 'skill' rating involve?

I'm assuming some sort of aggregate here. The lump some of list building capabilities, deployment capabilities, movement, strategic focus, etc. One could be at the same overall skill level without being exactly equal in the details.

sourclams wrote:I wonder if you could quantify the skill element even further given two known lists within relatively few 'tactical' options to actually solve for the percentage impact skill can have on the game given "average" dice rolls, and 1 or 2 standard deviations out. Doing so you could actually "prove" some unit combinations are easier or harder to play than others (requiring more/less skill).

Actually, this is something that would be interesting to see more about.

Clearly a meltagun takes more skill in the movement phase in order to achieve the same result as a lascannon, which requires NO skill to use in the movement phase (you know, because you can't move and shoot it). However, in order to compensate for this, meltaguns are made much superior both in efficiency and effectiveness on a per-shot basis.

In this case, GW is clearly rewarding people who have relatively better skills in the movement phase by giving them weapons that work better when you are more competent at movement than your opponent.

How this actually factors into this discussion is a mystery to me. I almost feel like we'd need some really smart math guy, or a GW representative to talk about this. Clearly there's something to this, but what?

In terms of quantifying what the skill numbers mean, you could simply say, "that's how many mistakes were made".

It's probably an oversimplification, as mistakes are not all of the same value, but what if you assigned each mistake a rating. A ten-point mistake would be something critically bad, while a one-point mistake might be shooting in the wrong order, thereby missing out on one extra possible casualty.

The overall math remains the same. Two players who each make 5 points worth of mistakes (assuming we correctly assign point values to mistakes) are likely to have their game decided by luck.

Here's a scenario.

Two players are in the same situation. They've got one shot left, a lascannon. It can take a high-percentage shot at a fully loaded enemy transport that needs to be stopped this turn, or a low percentage shot at a land raider that is further away, and that has blown smoke.

The skilled player, recognizing the situation, fires at the rhino, but misses. The poorer player fires at the land raider, and despite the odds, immobilizes it.

Both players are now subject to whatever the rhino was going to do. But one player is in a much better position for three turns from now.

Where is your skill now

Also, remember that "mistake" is a tricky word, here. Often, a gamble is called a mistake only if it fails. Big gambles that have big failures are called big mistakes. Big gambles that have big successes are called triumphs.

Good post with some good analysis and arguments.

My 'motto':

Skill allows you to increase your chances to be 'lucky' and helps mitigate your 'unluck' or your opponents 'luck'.

After all, if you only had a single guardsmen on the table, regardless of skill, there is only so much you can do. In this case, player skill would be a relatively insignificant factor, as a bad player and a good player aren't going to be able to make much difference about how they use that one dude on the table. Yes, a better player is more likely to make closer to 100% usefulness out of that guardsman than the noob, but the limiting factor is that you still only have one guardsman on the table. He is not going to win a 1000 point game by himself.

Except sometimes that one guardsman that is left makes all the difference in the world.

Here is the other thing too that you haven't taken into account. As you go up in skill level, mistakes are more magnified. At a lower skill level, a moderate mistake even between two equally skilled players matters less than in high level play.

At the highest level, the top players are able to take advantage of small errors and turn them into critical advantages...so you also have to factor that in. I don't think luck means more as you go up in skill level. If anything, between two good players it usually comes down to who makes that critical error or the game becomes a draw. In some ways, mitigation of mistakes becomes more important as you become better and better at the game and face tougher and tougher competition.

I might add that this is true for all things, be it chess, sports, or video games like street fighter.




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I would note, though, that comparing 40k to poker isn't the best analogy. Skill in poker is based on psychology. The only reason it works is because you don't know what your opponent's randomly determined stuff (the cards) is. In 40k, both players have full access to information about the random part of the game (both players see the die rolls).

Well, a lot of the dastardly tactics in poker work in 40k, but poker is about money so it's kinda considered "okay." It's really unsportsmanlike in 40k. For instance, pressuring your opponent to play faster, or deliberately trying to distract him with something. One of the things card dealers are taught is to push players to play quickly with subtle things like gesturing them to make a decision when they're thinking about it. The advantage is twofold: You make sloppier decisions when you don't think them through, and you also fork over your money faster if you play more hands.

I've seen things like the fanatic bluff. Some orc and goblin players will place their fanatics (usually a lot of them) on the table first while fishing out the rest of their army. The idea is to psychologically make the opponent think about fanatics while he's deploying...even if the orc player doesn't even use the fanatics.

Another common one is the "painted monster bluff". Some player will super up talk their lord of tzeentch or whatever, making the monster sound super good and super scary. Then when the opponent concentrates on the monster, the player quietly kill his opponent with the rest of his army while having some pretend remorse that his super unit got "defeated."

Your imagination is your limit.