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Seems like the meaning of tactics and strategy are being intermixed a bit.

40k is full of tactics. A tactic is a method of employing actions to achieve a goal, such as throwing a grenade under a tank to damage the treads. A strategy is a plan designed to achieve goals, such as taking out enemy tanks first in an engagement to reduce their impact on your own forces.

First you have to understand what you're talking about in order to convey your thoughts. You can't say a game has no tactics, because by the very definition of the word the game cannot be played without them! Choosing where to deploy your troops during deployment is a tactical choice. Moving your troops is a tactic. Shooting the enemy with a gun is a tactic. Using cover, tactics. Calling reinforcements, tactics. Any and all games employ tactics. Using Star Power in Super Mario is a tactic. A tactic is an action taken to achieve a goal.

A strategy is an overall plan for how you will employ tactics to achieve a larger goal. Using scout units to deny enemy deep striking is a strategic choice. You recognize an inherent danger and formulate a plan to prevent it. Your strategy is to prevent/use deep striking, or to dominate the psykic phase. How you use your army to accomplish these tasks is part of your strategy and yes building a list to perform a task is a strategic choice. List building is part of your strategy and it's always been a part of the game. I don't understand why people rail against it when making a custom army is 90% of the draw.

So when you approach a table to play a game of 40k with your army and you review the opponent's force and begin to think how you will beat it you are in fact engaged in strategic planning. Your plan to win is your strategy, how you employ that plan is with the tactics of moving and shooting and fighting with your models.

So by definition 40k is bereft of neither strategy or tactics, but it sounds like people are unimpressed with the way both these concepts play out on the tabletop. The only thing I can think of is to play more narrative oriented games where the objectives are more than card draws or protect/attack certain areas. Try your hand at designing your own missions and definitely brainstorm with your group as to how you can inject more interest in the story rather than the crunch of the games you play.

8th overly simplified a lot of the mechanics that gave more complexity to the game and by complexity I mean it put more factors in play to muddy the waters of decision making. All the fiddly mechanics, niche special rules, and more varied profiles added more things to consider so it made decisions feel less cut and dry. While generally not all that deep or complex, it did throw in more mental balls to juggle and gave more opportunity for players to try different strategies/tactics. That being said I will continue to point out that 8th's BROKEN AS GAK (holy terra how did this get though play testing?) terrain and cover system shot itself in the foot for complexity and tactics because most boards will lack enough of the correct terrain for it to have any real impact on the game.

Come on Vankraken, 8th is the Most Playtested Edition.

Anyway, when I think Sideboard, I think Steamroller and playing for skew instead of the system being all-comers and that"s a turn-off. Now, rather than sideboards being for minis, it could be for auxiliary gear: Dozer Blades and Extra Armor and Grapplehooks, etc. You know, support stuff that you normally wouldn't spend points on anyway.

I agree that 8th is probably oversimplified for us long time players who are used to seeing the same WS chart for years, but I have to point out one major advantage 8th has over any other edition I've played and that's playability. This also may be affected by my very casual and fluffy approach to the game nowadays, but I find on the whole it is much easier to get through a game and with much more enjoyable results. Yes there are things I miss like vehicle facing and LOS rules in general but I find that most of what I dislike about 40k is actually really things I dislike about GW the company. Once I was able to separate the company from the game and engage in the hobby how I wanted I soon saw a lot of my issues were actually with a corporate mindset and not really connected to how I was going to play the game. Knowing that, I'm able to sort of forgive the game and the rules and focus on stuff like names for the Exarch who survived getting hit with a Force Sword last game and things like that.


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I mean, outside of a competitive setting there is no reason why 40k games should be boring. Like, damn. How can a bunch of awesome painted minis duking it out with stupidly OP weapons be boring? It might be because my first army was 6th Ed Khorne DP + Zerker swarm but, I love it when any model dies. The bigger the better. Guardians getting misted by autocannons, IKs falling over on gak, psykers brains popping and killing power armoured models with two wounds with a single overheated plaspistol shot is actually where the game is at. Getting eaten by a swarm of hundreds of Nids should be on your tactical to do list.

Enfilading and defilading fire are irrelevant. Flanking a unit receives no real benefit. You can simply set up units wherever you like on the battlefield rather than actually work as a unit to get them into position. Pinning a unit down is not even in the rules. Cover is negated by half of the weapons in the game, and units like guardsmen are overall less protected by cover than better armor save units. Vehicles no longer have different armor values, so flanking them is irrelevant now as well.

No 40k does not have any real tactics. It's more of a list building game with target priority thrown in and a lot of dice. Any real decision making is lacking.

 darkcloak wrote:
Seems like the meaning of tactics and strategy are being intermixed a bit.

40k is full of tactics. A tactic is a method of employing actions to achieve a goal, such as throwing a grenade under a tank to damage the treads. A strategy is a plan designed to achieve goals, such as taking out enemy tanks first in an engagement to reduce their impact on your own forces.

First you have to understand what you're talking about in order to convey your thoughts. You can't say a game has no tactics, because by the very definition of the word the game cannot be played without them! Choosing where to deploy your troops during deployment is a tactical choice. Moving your troops is a tactic. Shooting the enemy with a gun is a tactic. Using cover, tactics. Calling reinforcements, tactics. Any and all games employ tactics. Using Star Power in Super Mario is a tactic. A tactic is an action taken to achieve a goal.

A strategy is an overall plan for how you will employ tactics to achieve a larger goal. Using scout units to deny enemy deep striking is a strategic choice. You recognize an inherent danger and formulate a plan to prevent it. Your strategy is to prevent/use deep striking, or to dominate the psykic phase. How you use your army to accomplish these tasks is part of your strategy and yes building a list to perform a task is a strategic choice. List building is part of your strategy and it's always been a part of the game. I don't understand why people rail against it when making a custom army is 90% of the draw.

So when you approach a table to play a game of 40k with your army and you review the opponent's force and begin to think how you will beat it you are in fact engaged in strategic planning. Your plan to win is your strategy, how you employ that plan is with the tactics of moving and shooting and fighting with your models.

So by definition 40k is bereft of neither strategy or tactics, but it sounds like people are unimpressed with the way both these concepts play out on the tabletop. The only thing I can think of is to play more narrative oriented games where the objectives are more than card draws or protect/attack certain areas. Try your hand at designing your own missions and definitely brainstorm with your group as to how you can inject more interest in the story rather than the crunch of the games you play.

I dont think anyone has been really confusing stratagy and tactics. And yeah, you have to make the choice to shoot the las canon at the tank. On the other hand the choice to shoot the las canon at the tank instead of the guardsman is obvious. The closest thing to meaningful tactical choice we get is stratagems and since those are based on a limited currency its not great for the games tactical choices to be carried on the back of those.

 darkcloak wrote:
You can't say a game has no tactics, because by the very definition of the word the game cannot be played without them! Choosing where to deploy your troops during deployment is a tactical choice. Moving your troops is a tactic. Shooting the enemy with a gun is a tactic. Using cover, tactics. Calling reinforcements, tactics. Any and all games employ tactics.

That's just nitpicking the definition of "none". Would you prefer that we say 40k has incredibly shallow tactics? Most of the choices you make in 40k are obvious, and most of them are made during list construction. For example, you don't plan out a careful movement approach (using cover, suppressing fire, etc) to get your short-ranged plasma guns into position without getting shot up first. You just deploy them within 12" of whatever you want to kill and roll dice to see how much damage they do.


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 darkcloak wrote:
How can a bunch of awesome painted minis duking it out with stupidly OP weapons be boring?.

Because when everything is "OP" nothing is OP. There's no complex game of move vs. counter-move, you don't earn those moments of spectacle, you just roll lots of dice and see what the dice say. So why even bother playing the game? Just write some fanfiction about how cool your army is and how "OP" all of its weapons are.


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 Vankraken wrote:
All the fiddly mechanics, niche special rules, and more varied profiles added more things to consider so it made decisions feel less cut and dry.

The problem is that it makes decisions harder, but "this is hard because I don't understand the rules" is really poor game design. It isn't difficult because you're trying to out-smart your opponent and you aren't sure which move is going to be the right one to counter their plans, it's difficult because there are too many random dice involved to quickly do the math necessary to make an accurate evaluation (and don't want to bog the game down getting out a calculator for every shot). So yeah, it's less cut and dry, but in a way that takes away the value of player choices and encourages you to just flip a coin between your options and see what the dice decide.

This is going to be me being kind of a broken record about this, but beyond the gates of antares has alternating unit activation with orders issued to the units having different permissions and effects.

That gives you a tactical choice of which unit to activate and when. And then a tactical choice of what order to issue to it.

Just as a base line, before you ever get into the much better and more meaningful los and terrain rules that make movement significantly more tactical as well, that makes your every action in the game vastly more tactically rewarding for the players involved.

Again, the issue with 40k is that its 2 players taking turns swinging clubs at each other. The best choice, always, is to deal as much damage as possible to the enemy to weaken their retaliation. So you build your list to find ways to do that and then deploy intelligently to mitigate their first turn and maximize yours. And then you shoot the lascanons at the tanks, the anti infantry at the infantry, and charge the guns to tie them up on their next turn.

I am not saying everyone should just play btgoa with 40k models (though i basically do and its great) but 40k needs to be built to have more of that. It needs tactical movement. Tactical choices that matter with not obvious answers.

Well ya know Peregrine I do have to wonder at your assessment of the game since you were pretty salty about 40k several years ago when I first started playing and discovered this forum. I can't help but note that after taking a break my own outlook on the game has changed rather drastically having come back to this new ruleset.

If you really want to play a game where movement and planning ahead matter go play Xwing. Seriously, it's awesome. If 40k is so cut and paste then why are we here? Obviously the choice to shoot the lascannon at the tank is obvious. But what were you doing with them before when you thought the rules were more tactical? Shooting tanks I'll bet. Like, come on. Movement doesn't matter because I can just put plasma spam on the board wherever I want and go boom. Well, yeah if that's how you want to play then sure. Go ahead and do that. But let's not pretend that flanking an opponent is suddenly useless or that the cookie cutter approach to competitive list building has any impact on what happens at your game table.

If you ask me, which no one does but I say anyways, 40k is better off for the simplification in rules for the simple fact that it's easier to actually play. People who for years declined to play warhammer on account of the hours of reading stats and flipping through books are now sitting down and going oh yeah, this is fun. So, yeah sure, the game is simpler, but it runs a hell of a lot better. There are kinks to be worked out and I'm still personally leery of investing too heavily in books right now but overall I'm more happy with GW than I've ever been in the past.

But that's beside the point, if you really feel like your gameplay experience is 'extremely shallow' then perhaps it's not the games fault.

 darkcloak wrote:


If you ask me, which no one does but I say anyways, 40k is better off for the simplification in rules for the simple fact that it's easier to actually play. People who for years declined to play warhammer on account of the hours of reading stats and flipping through books are now sitting down and going oh yeah, this is fun. So, yeah sure, the game is simpler, but it runs a hell of a lot better. There are kinks to be worked out and I'm still personally leery of investing too heavily in books right now but overall I'm more happy with GW than I've ever been in the past.

But that's beside the point, if you really feel like your gameplay experience is 'extremely shallow' then perhaps it's not the games fault.

Once again, it's not mechanical complexity that 40k needs. The simplification of the over all mechanics going into 8th is great. The game should be easy to play. But easy to play and tactically shallow are not synonymous. You can have both tactical depth and simple mechanical game play. 7th was a train wreck of overly complex mechanics. 8th did a great job of making the game, for the most part, actually enjoyable. But that doesn't mean it isn't lacking in certain areas or that it's perfect and cannot possibly be improved. 40k can be improved A LOT. Ad right now it's biggest failing isn't it's complexity or lack there of. It is it's depth.

 darkcloak wrote:
If you really want to play a game where movement and planning ahead matter go play Xwing. Seriously, it's awesome.

X-Wing is my primary game.

Obviously the choice to shoot the lascannon at the tank is obvious. But what were you doing with them before when you thought the rules were more tactical? Shooting tanks I'll bet. Like, come on.

Obviously shooting tanks, but at least there were tactical questions like moving vs. shooting, how to get side/rear armor shots, etc. It was never an especially deep game, but 8th has only made the problem worse.

But let's not pretend that flanking an opponent is suddenly useless

It is useless. Units have no concept of facing, shooting a unit with a pair of units on opposite sides is no better than shooting both from the same side. All that matters is if you're in range, and if you're sitting on objectives to score points. Unless there's an objective located on the flank there's zero incentive to be there.

or that the cookie cutter approach to competitive list building has any impact on what happens at your game table.

Why wouldn't it? Are we supposed to pretend that building good lists is a thing that doesn't happen?

But that's beside the point, if you really feel like your gameplay experience is 'extremely shallow' then perhaps it's not the games fault.

Or perhaps it is the game's fault. It's hardly a unique claim, and even you admit that the game has been simplified.

 Lance845 wrote:

 darkcloak wrote:


If you ask me, which no one does but I say anyways, 40k is better off for the simplification in rules for the simple fact that it's easier to actually play. People who for years declined to play warhammer on account of the hours of reading stats and flipping through books are now sitting down and going oh yeah, this is fun. So, yeah sure, the game is simpler, but it runs a hell of a lot better. There are kinks to be worked out and I'm still personally leery of investing too heavily in books right now but overall I'm more happy with GW than I've ever been in the past.

But that's beside the point, if you really feel like your gameplay experience is 'extremely shallow' then perhaps it's not the games fault.

Once again, it's not mechanical complexity that 40k needs. The simplification of the over all mechanics going into 8th is great. The game should be easy to play. But easy to play and tactically shallow are not synonymous. You can have both tactical depth and simple mechanical game play. 7th was a train wreck of overly complex mechanics. 8th did a great job of making the game, for the most part, actually enjoyable. But that doesn't mean it isn't lacking in certain areas or that it's perfect and cannot possibly be improved. 40k can be improved A LOT. Ad right now it's biggest failing isn't it's complexity or lack there of. It is it's depth.

Yeah. Even though I'd say it has much improved compared to 7th edition in that there actually are some meaningful decisions to make and positioning has become quite important now, it's still a long way to lotr for example. Or Star Trek Attack Wing. The only thing that's still quite useless is morale as 80% of the units in the game still outright ignore it. And that's similar to what made the bloat in 7th edition. All those tank rules were nice and flavorful, but when a tank had only 3-4hp and could explode on a 4+ it made the whole system of armor facings an unnecessary waste of time.

Tactics in 40k involve knowing the rules to the fullest and taking advantage of them (surrounding ennemies so they can't fall back, removing front models to prevent assault, etc...)

They rarely (if ever) involve outsmarting your opponent.

If you want this kind of tactics, you should try Bloodbowl, another game by GW. It's closer to Chess and you will need to think of a strategy if you want to win.

If you play with balanced lists tactics matter.

For 7th, cover and flanking did go hand-in-hand. Granted, the cover and casualty allocations for 7th were mostly heavily adapted from 2nd ("Closest model dies first") but it was intuitive to a point and made sense to some degree. It was mostly folks complaining that specials/heavies couldn't be "taken up" by the guy next to them that led to the system for 8th being so painfully abstracted, to the point that it's now impossible to snipe out squad sergeants/Exarches.

The real issues were the disconnect between "regular" vehicles/monsters and superheavies, the latter having many a snowflake exception to the rules which resulted in more minute finangling with the rules to decipher. Stuff like how Helfrost Weapons removed enemy models on failed Strength Checks instead of having Instant Death, leading to OHKO Magnus but a Wraithknight taking some wounds.

7th had the issue of "soft decay" for Psychic Powers. Since Psykers could pool Warp Charge, yet the amount of Warp Charge available for powers was outpaced by the number of Psykers wanting to cast, you ended up with "Batteries + the one Caster that matters." (Usually: The one Caster with Invisibility using everyone else's WC). 8th just doubled-down on that system by creating Psychic Focus (IMO, a form of Fake Balance). Want to attempt to cast more than one Da Jump? Nope. What about more than one 'Eadbutt? Nope. Invisibility totally would have been balanced if you could only attempt it once per turn; it's not like the most mathematically efficient use of the power would have been on your Wraithknight/Barkstar/etc.

Of course, the same situation comes up with Stratagems and powers too. "Gee, do I use Take Cover on my unit of Guardsmen with a regular 5+ save, or on my unit of Crusaders with a 3+ Invulnerable?" If the Pacific were as deep as the 40k decision matrix, the Japanese could drive their cars to Malibu Beach.

There are absolutely tactics in 40k. Loads. Do I deep strike or deploy as normal? Deep strike within 9" to get rapid fire while risking auspex scan casualties? This determines which order you should deep strike in. Advance towards the objective or get more firepower by standing still? Pop smoke and advance or sit back and shoot? How to deploy to deny having too many vehicles locked in combat? That deployment will be different if the enemy has flyers as well. Do you pop "take cover" stratagem now, or wait until they target the more important squad you have? Or is he just bluffing? Do you remove casualties from the front to take you out of combat or from the back to keep you on the objective?

There are tons of tactics. I'm really enjoying it.

Just yesterday a raven guard player infiltrated half his army up close to my tanks and charged me 1st turn locking down 4 vehicles. I was able to back up and blow away most of his forces but he pulled the brilliant tactic to charge his Shrike into a basilisk I had wedged into a corner so I couldn't back out. And as long as he didn't kill my basilisk, I couldn't shoot his shrike (which was worth a ton of secondary points for me).

ThePorcupine wrote:
There are absolutely tactics in 40k. Loads. Do I deep strike or deploy as normal? Deep strike within 9" to get rapid fire while risking auspex scan casualties? This determines which order you should deep strike in. Advance towards the objective or get more firepower by standing still? Pop smoke and advance or sit back and shoot? How to deploy to deny having too many vehicles locked in combat? That deployment will be different if the enemy has flyers as well. Do you pop "take cover" stratagem now, or wait until they target the more important squad you have? Or is he just bluffing? Do you remove casualties from the front to take you out of combat or from the back to keep you on the objective?

There are tons of tactics. I'm really enjoying it.

Just yesterday a raven guard player infiltrated half his army up close to my tanks and charged me 1st turn locking down 4 vehicles. I was able to back up and blow away most of his forces but he pulled the brilliant tactic to charge his Shrike into a basilisk I had wedged into a corner so I couldn't back out. And as long as he didn't kill my basilisk, I couldn't shoot his shrike (which was worth a ton of secondary points for me).

Lets see... 1,2,3,4,5,6.... 6 of things you just mentioned are deployment.

1 was a stratagem, that again, is built on a limited currency.

1 was a choice between shooting or claiming an objective, the answer to which is obvious depending on the mission you're playing.

1 was popping smoke and advancing or sitting back and shooting. The answer is shooting unless advancing will reach an objective to get you a VP, it's always shooting.

Oh gak you're right. Smart deployment isn't tactics. Silly me. Neither are smart use of strategems and CP, target priority, balancing firepower vs mobility. You're right. Carry on. 40k is garbage and I should throw all my models in the trash.

Also cute how you don't mention the smart locking of a vehicle in combat against a wall to make yourself immune to shooting.

ThePorcupine wrote:
Oh gak you're right. Smart deployment isn't tactics. Silly me. Neither are smart use of strategems and CP, target priority, balancing firepower vs mobility. You're right. Carry on. 40k is garbage and I should throw all my models in the trash.

It's tactics by the strictest definition of the word, but it's not very deep or interesting tactics. Do I deep strike my unit? What a tough question. I can either deploy it in my deployment zone at the start of the game, or I can deploy it anywhere outside 9" of enemy models (including anywhere in my deployment zone) at the start of any of my turns with no penalties at all. Maybe you can come up with some weird edge case scenario where this isn't true, but 99.999999% of the time you deep strike every unit that can do it. Same thing with other decisions. Do I shoot this lascannon at a tank, or at a horde of guardsmen? I don't know, that's a tough one...

Also cute how you don't mention the smart locking of a vehicle in combat against a wall to make yourself immune to shooting.

Probably because it's neither clever (everyone knows about this, and it's the automatic thing to do every time you get the chance) nor realistic (it only works because of the arbitrary table edge, and is just exploiting badly-designed rules).


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ThePorcupine wrote:
Oh gak you're right. Smart deployment isn't tactics. Silly me. Neither are smart use of strategems and CP, target priority, balancing firepower vs mobility. You're right. Carry on. 40k is garbage and I should throw all my models in the trash.

It's tactics by the strictest definition of the word, but it's not very deep or interesting tactics. Do I deep strike my unit? What a tough question. I can either deploy it in my deployment zone at the start of the game, or I can deploy it anywhere outside 9" of enemy models (including anywhere in my deployment zone) at the start of any of my turns with no penalties at all. Maybe you can come up with some weird edge case scenario where this isn't true, but 99.999999% of the time you deep strike every unit that can do it. Same thing with other decisions. Do I shoot this lascannon at a tank, or at a horde of guardsmen? I don't know, that's a tough one...

Also cute how you don't mention the smart locking of a vehicle in combat against a wall to make yourself immune to shooting.

Probably because it's neither clever (everyone knows about this, and it's the automatic thing to do every time you get the chance) nor realistic (it only works because of the arbitrary table edge, and is just exploiting badly-designed rules).

ThePorcupine wrote:
Oh gak you're right. Smart deployment isn't tactics. Silly me. Neither are smart use of strategems and CP, target priority, balancing firepower vs mobility. You're right. Carry on. 40k is garbage and I should throw all my models in the trash.

Also cute how you don't mention the smart locking of a vehicle in combat against a wall to make yourself immune to shooting.

It's not cute and it's not tactically deep. It's the obvious choice. Remove your ability to gain points AND remove your unit from the fight at the same time. Not because locking it into a combat is some tactically genius move but because one player deployed poorly and the other player capitalized on it in the most obvious way possible. If you had a gun and you could either shoot the person trying to kill you or shoot yourself in the foot which one would you do? TACTICS!

Deep striking units within 9" is absolutely not 100% by the very example I gave in my post. Every time I've done it to a marine player I've lost 2-3 men to auspex scan. In hind sight I probably would've done better deep striking them into ruins for additional cover even though I'd be foregoing rapid fire plasma with a couple guys. And in cases where your army gets -1 to hit from more than 12" away, maybe you don't want to come up close and lose that benefit.

Locking a trapped basilisk in combat to deny me a kill for several turns is absolutely clever. He had the option to bolt out of there into some ruins to try and survive, but ultimately did the counter-intuitive thing of charging head-first into my army which made him almost invulnerable. In most cases I could back off and blow him off the board. Not in this case.

I feel you're seriously oversimplifying the decision-making in 8e to fit your "8e sux" narrative.

ThePorcupine wrote:
Deep striking units within 9" is absolutely not 100% by the very example I gave in my post. Every time I've done it to a marine player I've lost 2-3 men to auspex scan. In hind sight I probably would've done better deep striking them into ruins for additional cover even though I'd be foregoing rapid fire plasma with a couple guys. And in cases where your army gets -1 to hit from more than 12" away, maybe you don't want to come up close and lose that benefit.

Thats all just a math equation. There is a statistically best option for you to do and you should do it. And not doing it is sub optimal. That is why it's tactically shallow. You can math hammer out the average losses you will suffer from aspex scan and act accordingly. The difference between a good player and a great player isn't interesting tactical decisions. It's memorizing and understanding formula. Building a list with a cohesive strategy and then understanding how to most optimally minimize your enemy and maximize yourself. It's why some 70% of all games are won by the player who goes first. 30% are people making dumb mistakes or bad lists.

Locking a trapped basilisk in combat to deny me a kill for several turns is absolutely clever. He had the option to bolt out of there into some ruins to try and survive, but ultimately did the counter-intuitive thing of charging head-first into my army which made him almost invulnerable. In most cases I could back off and blow him off the board. Not in this case.

Maybe you haven't come across it before so you were taken by surprise? You make your own argument against you. You call it counter intuitive but it's not. It made him invulnerable. It made you helpless. Thats the MOST intuitive thing to do.

I feel you're seriously oversimplifying the decision-making in 8e to fit your "8e sux" narrative.

I don't think 8th sux. I think 8th has made huge stride forward. I just cannot figure out for the life of me why the feth they stuck with IGOUGO. It's the least interesting thing in the game and the root cause of all the shallow tactical decision making, all the down time, all the alpha/beta strikes, all the obvious choices.

Everything is a math equation. That's a silly argument. Unless you introduce actual real-time twitch controls into the game, everything can be reduced to a math equation. Everything but positioning, which you and peregrine seem to reduce to obvious and holding no tactical depth. So I'm not really sure what you consider to be of "tactical depth" that can't be reduced to a math equation.

And it wasn't obvious because I was even the one to suggest it to him. 9 times out of 10 there's always a way for my vehicles to back out of a battle with a single model. But if he positioned his Shrike JUST RIGHT on the corner of my basilisk, it was trapped. It was very much not obvious. The game doesn't scream at you "MOVE INTO THE JAWS OF THE ENEMY TO BE INVULNERABLE"

A few things I've learned over the years.

Terrain, turn zero, the designer, and the player: A player who can have certain expectations about the battlefield (play space) will have far more agency in designing an army ahead of time. And for the designer, to know that there will always be specific features available to the player, allows them to better design the units according to how the two interact. As it stands, to my knowledge, 40k has the least/worst defined battlefield setup rules. This leads even more so to math wins.

The flow of knowledge against the current of expectation: The info available to a player as they make decisions, based on expectations of what will happen should change as often between decisions as possible. That is to say, for every major unit of action(s) a player takes there would ideally be a chance for the opponent to make a decision as well. Like in Chess or checkers or go or almost any other board game. Both Warhammer games have this bizarre hell bent on an entire army activating at once. This is akin to having every Chess piece on the board have a chance to do one move each, then the other player performs a move with each of theirs. This has several disadvantages, like making it difficult to hide overall intent, and again favoring math and volume. Many designs for games now use some sort of alternating activation system that passes between players far faster. AoS even switched to that for the Melee probably of the round, and this has been well received and seen as a marked uptick in the level of tactics, though at times the decisions offered to the player can seem obvious/forced/

ThePorcupine wrote:
Everything is a math equation. That's a silly argument. Unless you introduce actual real-time twitch controls into the game, everything can be reduced to a math equation. Everything but positioning, which you and peregrine seem to reduce to obvious and holding no tactical depth. So I'm not really sure what you consider to be of "tactical depth" that can't be reduced to a math equation.

And it wasn't obvious because I was even the one to suggest it to him. 9 times out of 10 there's always a way for my vehicles to back out of a battle with a single model. But if he positioned his Shrike JUST RIGHT on the corner of my basilisk, it was trapped. It was very much not obvious. The game doesn't scream at you "MOVE INTO THE JAWS OF THE ENEMY TO BE INVULNERABLE"

From the Tyranid Tactica



People who are paying attention to the charge and fight phase rules understand how positioning and movement can be used to surround and block units and tie them up. It's not some genius tactic. It's just understanding how the mechanics work.


Not everything is math in other systems. Again, other games (Bolt Action and BtGoA which were built on the back of 40ks old mechanics by one of 40ks old game designers) uses alternating unit activation and issuing order to the units to add a lot of tactical depth. Which units you activate and in what order matters a lot. Do you activate psykers early to buff or late to hit enemies who get close? Every action you take you enemy can answer. You have to guess at what he is going to do and in that way it becomes much more like chess. It's no longer just about calculating odds. Your not playing against the mechanics your playing against the other player. Because not every unit can do everything all the time because you issue orders to them what order you issue is a second layer of tactical decision making. Do they go to ground? Do they advance and shoot? Do they hold their ground? Do they set up for doing reactions to enemy orders?

40k is tactically shallow. Not all games are tactically shallow.

1. The tyranid example you posted is far from the norm at local shops. Is it common knowledge in competitive circles and tournaments? Yeah. Probably. And common push timings are common knowledge to masters and grandmasters in starcraft. I feel like the example you just posted undermines YOUR argument that 8e is tactically shallow. Moving gaunts in a specific order to consolidate AROUND the unit you don't care about and INTO the unit you do care about is pretty fascinating stuff. To me anyway.

2. Your main gripe seems to be "40k is not alternating unit activation." to which I say... Yep. you're right. It's not. It never was and it never will be. I'm very sorry.

Would it lead to more tactical depth? Probably. But that ship has sailed long long ago. And as far as a IGOUGO game, 8e is pretty damn impressive.

ThePorcupine wrote:
1. The tyranid example you posted is far from the norm at local shops. Is it common knowledge in competitive circles and tournaments? Yeah. Probably. And common push timings are common knowledge to masters and grandmasters in starcraft. I feel like the example you just posted undermines YOUR argument that 8e is tactically shallow. Moving gaunts in a specific order to consolidate AROUND the unit you don't care about and INTO the unit you do care about is pretty fascinating stuff. To me anyway.

2. Your main gripe seems to be "40k is not alternating unit activation." to which I say... Yep. you're right. It's not. It never was and it never will be. I'm very sorry.

Would it lead to more tactical depth? Probably. But that ship has sailed long long ago. And as far as a IGOUGO game, 8e is pretty damn impressive.

The knowledge of the example I posted from the tyranid tactica is there for anyone who cares to actually read and understand the implications of one page of the 8 page core rules to play the game. Has everyone realized how to actually use the fight phase rules to their advantage yet? Clearly not. But it's there and easy enough to understand if you just follow it step by step. That specific example is about how great the hormagaunts 6" pile in/consolidate is, but the implications of the actions are there for everyone to use.


No, my main gripe is that IGOUGO is bad all on it's own. It has certain inherent implications on the mechanics of the game and thus the way players end up playing it. IGOUGO is the reason alpha strikes exist. Its the reason the player who goes first wins the majority of the time. Its the reason for almost all of 40ks root problems.

AA is just the most obvious and most easily implemented solution. And also a great example to show you how your wrong about how all games are just math. They arn't. 40k is. Even just issuing orders to units would go a long way to changing the way the game is played and our tactical options on the field. But they don't have that. Tactics don't win games in 40k. Math equations do.

8th is only impressive in comparison to what came before it. And 7th was such a steaming pile of hot garbage that to be an impressive improvement isn't much of an achievement.

Never say never.

ThePorcupine wrote:
There are absolutely tactics in 40k. Loads. Do I deep strike or deploy as normal? Deep strike within 9" to get rapid fire while risking auspex scan casualties? This determines which order you should deep strike in. Advance towards the objective or get more firepower by standing still? Pop smoke and advance or sit back and shoot? How to deploy to deny having too many vehicles locked in combat? That deployment will be different if the enemy has flyers as well. Do you pop "take cover" stratagem now, or wait until they target the more important squad you have? Or is he just bluffing? Do you remove casualties from the front to take you out of combat or from the back to keep you on the objective?

There are tons of tactics. I'm really enjoying it.

Just yesterday a raven guard player infiltrated half his army up close to my tanks and charged me 1st turn locking down 4 vehicles. I was able to back up and blow away most of his forces but he pulled the brilliant tactic to charge his Shrike into a basilisk I had wedged into a corner so I couldn't back out. And as long as he didn't kill my basilisk, I couldn't shoot his shrike (which was worth a ton of secondary points for me).

Basically what everyone else said, there is no choice in any of those. There is a clear answer 99% of the time and to not take it is not a tactic but a failure of the player to recognize it.

Agree to disagree with you fellas. There is absolutely choice. I specifically outlined pros and cons to each of the situations in my post.

And I know it's common to say "1st turn wins. might as well quit. stupid alpha strike grumble grumble." That's certainly true when it comes to just two armies slapped down on the table with the objective of "kill the other guy" but I think the heavier emphasis on objectives and secondaries in things like ITC evens things out. Fully? Don't know. But I would like to see statistics of how often the players who go first win and what rule types those games use.

ThePorcupine wrote:
Agree to disagree with you fellas. There is absolutely choice. I specifically outlined pros and cons to each of the situations in my post.

And I know it's common to say "1st turn wins. might as well quit. stupid alpha strike grumble grumble." That's certainly true when it comes to just two armies slapped down on the table with the objective of "kill the other guy" but I think the heavier emphasis on objectives and secondaries in things like ITC evens things out. Fully? Don't know. But I would like to see statistics of how often the players who go first win and what rule types those games use.

ITC missions, terrain rules, and restricted time, are all house rules. The house is ITC. Claiming they make the game better is exactly like me saying using alternating unit activation makes the game better. Just because they are widely accepted house rules doesn't make them anything other than house rules. 40k the game has official missions. Those are the ones that matter when talking about 40k official game.