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 Ailaros wrote:

Red Corsair wrote:Yea I was very inclined to put Al'Rehem in one of those platoons so that the DZ issue would be alleviated, then add a coms relay to the Aegies or take an astropath.

So, I'm set on my next game being with vets, but it's actually making me take a look at vet special characters now. For example, a squad of carapace vets with 3x plasma and Harker's heavy bolter would be able to deploy outside of the DZ (and, depending on my opponent's deployment, possibly very far in the backfield indeed), and then turn one pop forward and fire 3 S7 and 3S5 attacks into the side of something for first blood.

The fact that they infiltrate, rather than merely outflank or scoot up a bit is suddenly strangely intriguing to me for some reason...

Hmmm, any other ideas as to how many vets you want? Maybe post up your list for a look? Also keep in mind you can't take grenadiers doctrine on Harkers unit.

Wait, why not?

Here's a list. If I'm going harker, then the HS is 2 hydras and an exterminator, along with 6 dura-vet squads, one of which with harker.

 Ailaros wrote:
Wait, why not?

Here's a list. If I'm going harker, then the HS is 2 hydras and an exterminator, along with 6 dura-vet squads, one of which with harker.

I'm giving the list your patented "aid test"

It's written above harker in the list entry. I think the idea is they travel light

I liked the batrep , but i always thought Power fists were basically just huge metal gloves you swung at people and the "power" came from the servos that help you lift it

shivman wrote:
I liked the batrep , but i always thought Power fists were basically just huge metal gloves you swung at people and the "power" came from the servos that help you lift it

Nah all power weapons have "crackling energy fields" that do most of the heavy lifting. Poor mans light saber lol.

First off I'm loving the new battle report style and can't wait to see more.

Second I'm a little rusty on my Guard rules, but I believe Harker has Slow and Purpouseful in his special rules so he can move and fire (so can his squad now with heavy weapons). Keep in mind the changes to this rule mean that the squad won't be able to fire overwatch shots when being charged.

Noc

Oh yeah, that's strange, it's just a flat out prohibition on grenadiers. That's strange. And unfortunate.

TheMicah queued me in to Amerikon's current battle reports, and how similar his list is to what I was thinking about. He's got a few sisters squads (vets), some rending heavy bolter squads/Exorcists (exterminators), and celestine deepstriking in with seraphim (stormies) as snipers/denial units.

Amerikon uses scouting meltagun squads, which is making me wonder about harker, who is even better at this as he can load up on plasma guns, relentlessly heavy bolter, and infiltrate, rather than scouting.

My ideas on this are rather set. More of a question with how I balance my main three elements. This idea of throwing in an infiltrating unit is a wildcard that I'm trying to wrap my head around.

Of course, I don't have a model for Harker. The closest analog I have is an officer with a storm bolter (back when they could take them):



Of course, this would be the puniest harker model ever fielded...

Oh, and as for powerfist on guard, I actually like them. They are basically marine power fists that only really lose ID against T4 models. The whole wounding on 2's with Ap2 is a nasty surprise, especially on a W3 model with an invul save.

9 mortars could fit in one of your platoon lists being represented by 3 HWS teams hiding behind cover and lobbing shells without the problem of no LOS. But I guess you aren't going to be playing platoon guard for some time.

Have you thought about a hybrid of platoon and foot vets ?
5 vet squads and one platoon, the platoon can provide mortars and other HWS to bombard your opponent while the vets walk across spraying their SW's.

 Ailaros wrote:

Kingsley wrote:Only bad players rely on lucky results. Only average players rely on average results. Good players, on the other hand, can "play around" a good deal of luck and win anyway.

This makes no sense at all.

No matter your skill level, the results of any given action you take (outside of moving across clear terrain) are going to be determined by die rolls. The only way a "good" player is able to "make" things better is if player skill referred to how well you were able to load your dice, or some clever way of throwing them.

Good players manipulate the game situation so that below average rolls aren't as important.

For instance, in a recent game I had, I encountered a large unit of Thunderwolf Cavalry who were all equipped with Storm Shields. I fed them a transport, which they assaulted and blew up, but were bunched up as a result. In theory, my two Vindicators would then be sufficient to kill them thanks to Null Zone support from my Librarian, but to make sure I also disembarked large numbers of Marines from my forward transports to rapid-fire the Thunderwolves. It was good that I did, because one of the Vindicators scattered 8" backwards and killed only one Grey Hunter from another unit. The second Vindicator hit and wounded every Thunderwolf, but even having to reroll successful saves, my opponent "rolled hot" and saved the majority of his unit.

Thankfully, I had deployed in order to potentially deal with this, and fire from other support elements and dismounted Tactical Marines was able to kill the last Thunderwolves before they had a chance to do further damage to my army. In this way, my player skill allowed me to compensate for bad rolling by making the Vindicators only one element in the equation. When they rolled poorly for their attacks and my opponent rolled well for his saves, I had enough backup in my game plan to deal with them anyway.

On the other hand, I recently played a game against a very Wraith-heavy Necron army. I thought "automatic win" because Vindicators with Null Zone completely destroy Wraiths, and the table was to my advantage. However, on turn one, my Librarian flubbed his Psychic test for Null Zone, and I did much less damage to the Wraiths than expected. The Necron player was then able to take advantage of my poor deployment to deal heavy damage to me, and while I responded bravely and nearly took the game back, I ultimately lost.

Did I lose that game due to luck? It would be easy to say that I did-- after all, that Psychic test passes 33/36 times-- but in my view I lost that game due to overconfidence. I should have deployed Tactical Marines from my transports in screening positions in order to prevent my opponent's Wraiths from hitting my important stuff if I didn't take them out, but I didn't, and therefore when the dice turned against me I wasn't prepared. Had I been more thoughtful and incorporated a backup plan, though, I could certainly have won that game even with the initial Psychic test failure.

This is what I mean when I say that good players can "play around" luck and that only average players rely on average results. Good players create game plans that can withstand fluctuations in the dice; average players don't, and therefore lose when things go poorly for them. Now, it's possible that luck will be so extreme that it will make up for even a good strategy, with backup plans included-- I could have missed literally all my shots from my Tactical Marines, for instance-- but in practice such things don't tend to happen, and certainly don't happen frequently. Even when such things do happen, victory is possible for a good player-- Dashofpepper has a story about a game where his entire shooty Dark Eldar alpha strike shook one Chimera, and he still pulled out the win.

Luck is overrated, and one of the most important skills in 40k is knowing how to minimize its effects.

If we take everything out of your story wherein the results of what you were trying to do was determined by die rolls, you'd get...

Kingsley wrote:For instance, in a recent game I had, I encountered a large unit of Thunderwolf Cavalry who were all equipped with Storm Shields. I fed them a transport. I also disembarked large numbers of Marines from my forward transports.

On the other hand, I recently played a game against a very Wraith-heavy Necron army. I thought "automatic win"... I responded bravely and nearly took the game back, I ultimately lost.

... which is kind of meaningless.

Kingsley wrote:This is what I mean when I say that good players can "play around" luck and that only average players rely on average results.

Everybody relies on luck, because everybody only does anything by rolling dice. A good player is relying on being able to roll a 4+ against a land raider just as much as a bad player. Seriously, if you really don't think luck is a factor, play a game where you agree that every die you roll will be a 1. If you think that luck is only a trivial factor, then play a game where every die you roll is a 2. You will lose, horribly, even against someone who is way worse than you.

The difference between good and bad players is that they play the best odds they can at any time, and in any circumstances. It's the dice that determine the circumstances, though.

Kingsley wrote:in my view I lost that game due to overconfidence

Prove it.

Let's quantify confidence and play a few dozen games, and see with what percentage of accuracy your theory matches reality. Better yet, go back and quantize my previous 90 battle reports and come up with a real working theory.

Without it, you're just engaging in speculation, something I don't find terribly useful.

Kingsley wrote:Even when such things do happen, victory is possible for a good player-- Dashofpepper has a story about a game where his entire shooty Dark Eldar alpha strike shook one Chimera, and he still pulled out the win.

Dashofpepper was insane. He once bet a monthly mortgage payment on a game of 40k. How he could be holding a check for a few hundred dollars in one hand and a bunch of dice in the other and then, with a straight face say "I'm not gambling" is completely beyond me.

He was also SUPER biased. He believed that 40k was on par with chess, and so his battle reports nearly completely ignore the results of die rolls, except for those few times when he had a couple of bad rolls and then won anyway to present the argument that if you have bad luck, and still win, then 40k is a game of skill.

I wouldn't trust his data for an instant.

Kingsley wrote:Luck is overrated, and one of the most important skills in 40k is knowing how to minimize its effects.

Define skill.

People have been passing off luck as skill since time immemorial. It only works if you have a very strange definition of the word "skill" when talking about a dice game.

Ailaros wrote:

Kingsley wrote:This is what I mean when I say that good players can "play around" luck and that only average players rely on average results.

Everybody relies on luck, because everybody only does anything by rolling dice. A good player is relying on being able to roll a 4+ against a land raider just as much as a bad player. Seriously, if you really don't think luck is a factor, play a game where you agree that every die you roll will be a 1. If you think that luck is only a trivial factor, then play a game where every die you roll is a 2. You will lose, horribly, even against someone who is way worse than you.

This is a silly straw man argument. It's rare to roll only ones on three dice, much less the dozens of dice you'll roll in a typical turn. If the dice absolutely hate you, will you lose? Sure, but that doesn't mean that you "rely on luck." It would be more accurate to say that you rely on luck in terms of variation from average. In my view, the more negative variation you can deal with, the better you are. Thus, better players are those who can win despite worse and worse luck. Is there a point where luck is so extreme even the best player can't win? Certainly. But that point is very unlikely to be reached in normal play.

Ailaros wrote:various insults against Dashofpepper

And yet he did quite well, and won multiple large tournaments. In fact, I believe one of his armies was entirely funded by tournament winnings from his previous army. That type of consistent victory in high-level play simply shouldn't be possible if games between high-level players truly do come down to luck.

Kingsley wrote:In my view, the more negative variation you can deal with, the better you are.

And how do you "deal with" it?

Kingsley wrote:And yet he did quite well, and won multiple large tournaments. In fact, I believe one of his armies was entirely funded by tournament winnings from his previous army. That type of consistent victory in high-level play simply shouldn't be possible if games between high-level players truly do come down to luck.

Prove it.

 Ailaros wrote:

Kingsley wrote:In my view, the more negative variation you can deal with, the better you are.

And how do you "deal with" it?

By setting up backup plans and contingencies that allow your overall game plan to work even if luck means that your units underperform. This is typically accomplished via force concentration, isolating enemy targets, etc.

Also, keep in mind that most good players consider the Deployment and Movement phases to be the most important of the game-- importantly, these are the two phases that are least affected by luck.

And how does a game plan effect the outcome of a game?

 Ailaros wrote:
And how does a game plan effect the outcome of a game?

I'm not really interested in continuing this line of discussion with someone who's clearly playing dumb. If you honestly don't know how a game plan affects the game or how to use redundancy to deal with potential bad luck, I don't really know what to say. Let me just sign off here by saying that I think you are very skilled at modeling and painting, I greatly enjoy reading your fluff and stories behind each game, and I appreciate the time that you take to post these battle reports on Dakka.

However, I think your view of the relationship between luck and skill in 40k is extremely low-level and that it is holding you back as a player.

I'm asking you to explain your position. You're making assertions without providing either proof or reasoning.

Whose understanding of the game is really low level? At least I understand what I believe and can explain why. I'd think a lack of understanding of what one believes will hold a person back more than having an opinion that disagrees with other, less articulate people.