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One thing that I've noticed is that, barring flagrant errors or extremely unbalanced matchups, the outcome of a game is typically decided by smart tactical play, not list composition. However, a lot of tactical discussion focuses on what list to take, not how to play.

To be honest, I support a different approach-- first, test a wide range of units and strategies until you find ones that you like to use and that fit well with your playstyle. Don't commit too early to certain units-- you may find that others suit your style better. For instance, in 5th edition everyone said that Predators were the optimal Space Marine Heavy Support choice, but through testing I found that I honestly preferred and did better with the then-humble Thunderfire Cannon.

Similarly, you have to play quite a few games with a unit before you have a good "feel" for it. For instance, I like to run a squad of ten Space Marine Scouts with bolters. A lot of people scoff at this unit or consider it bad-- and in some cases, it is! But in other cases it wins games for me, so I still run it despite the naysayers. If I had given up on this unit after my first few games with it (which were generally unexciting), I would be missing out on a tactical option that I've found to be very useful.

But once you've done a lot of testing and figured out what works well for you, keep your list more or less solid and focus more on tactics. When you encounter a new situation or an army you can't deal with-- first focus on changing your strategies, not your list, and then make tweaks as minor as possible in order to preserve your experience as best you can. It's certainly possible that new releases or types of opponents might cause you to have to vary your choices-- every new Codex, even if it doesn't apply directly to your primary or allied detachments, changes up the metagame-- but I for one advocate changing slowly and focusing on tactical play rather than list composition to win you games.

You see a lot of listbuilding discussions, because discussing actual tactics is nearly impossible.

Just have a look at a chess tactics description, and how extensive they are. There are very few "standard" situations that crop up in Warhammer, and they are all pretty self explanatory (counter-charging, hitting rear armor).


The other problem is, that Warhammer is a highly randomized game, even more so with the changes that the 6th edition brought with it.


I still agree that tactics are often neglected in favour of pure listbuilding and statistical comparrissons. Me and my friends sometimes switch armies to get a new look on our armies, and more often than not I find myself surprised that a unit that I found OP so far, is actually just being played very well.

DrunkPhilisoph wrote:
You see a lot of listbuilding discussions, because discussing actual tactics is nearly impossible.

Just have a look at a chess tactics description, and how extensive they are. There are very few "standard" situations that crop up in Warhammer, and they are all pretty self explanatory (counter-charging, hitting rear armor).


The other problem is, that Warhammer is a highly randomized game, even more so with the changes that the 6th edition brought with it.


I still agree that tactics are often neglected in favour of pure listbuilding and statistical comparrissons. Me and my friends sometimes switch armies to get a new look on our armies, and more often than not I find myself surprised that a unit that I found OP so far, is actually just being played very well.

QFT

this is all due to the fact that everyone has different preferences when making an army, hence the best armies are those that the player likes using, not the tourney lists that crop up most of the time.

Moreover since we are fighing minature battles no situation is going to be standard, so every comment about tactics in my mind has to relate to the lsit you are using as each one has different qualities...

There's a rather large amount of Tournament/Competitive players here on Dakka Dakka who focus a lot on the list building aspect of the game. This is because at the higher/highest levels of play the people participating are going to be veterans who have been around the block once or twice. This means that they'll probably be able to assess the tactics of a game at a very fast pace and counter it accordingly. So creative/non-traditional tactics will either be spotted quickly and countered or they will be ignored as ineffective because the person may have seen it before.

Point being: Since these players know most of the "tactics" involved with the game, list building becomes the only way to get a serious advantage, or at least avoid a disadvantage.

By taking the best possible units from the best codexes, they set themselves up to have an advantage versus less Powerful-Per-Point units. And in many cases it only evens the playing field as tournaments are filled with players that all optimize their lists. I think this is part of the reason why there is a focus on list building rather than "Tactics."

Let's take for example your unit of ten bolter scouts. A good, tournament-going player will see the unit's abilities and capabilities. Infiltration, scout moves, scoring, good anti-infantry fire, and reliant on cover saves. They'll then take a unit from their optimized list to destroy it or remove its ability to affect the game. In the case of chaos this would probably be helldrake. So it won't matter how clever the placement of your scouts are or how craftily you use them. The choice is simply invalidated by another unit choice from a different codex. Of course, this is all a vaccum and won't be affected by list synergy, but you see my basic point.

List building is extremely important at higher levels of play, and give extreme advantages to those at lower levels when facing unaware opponents.

It's easier to discuss if something is worth it's points than to explain maneuvering and deployment. The later is more difficult to teach and/or explain.

The medium is the message.

List discussion is something that is easy to do on the net. Strategic advice is harder to do on the nett.

Need tactical advice: get of the boards.

 schadenfreude wrote:
It's easier to discuss if something is worth it's points than to explain maneuvering and deployment. The later is more difficult to teach and/or explain.

This is true. Actual game tactics are something that have to be learned through experience.

I'm with the OP in spirit, though as many have pointed out, tactics are harder to discuss without seeing games unfold. Having said that, I'd rather read a post where people attempt to discuss tactics rather than another "what should my list look like" post.

Listbuilding is a tactic. Pushing the plastic is also a tactics, but without a full board layout and situation, it's hard to talk about.

I find that list building is the first and base part of tactics.
When building a marine army, I usually have only one CC specialist unit with the majority being cookie cutter approach.
The advantage is I know the capabilities of my troops and don't have to worry too much about getting squad A against target B but squad C has to face target D.

My old setup consisted of 5 - Las/Plas Razorbacks 4 with 6 tacticals with SW - usually a flamer. 1 Dakka Pred, 6 HB armed landspeeders and a Whirlwind. So I had 4 cookie cutter troops - admittedly limited - but that allows me to worry about getting my 1 HQ CC unit where the biggest threat is. The rest can worry about what the opponent is doing and what counter it needs... This army used to win based on the firepower it could put out and the mobility/lethality of those HB land speeders. Typically I would overwhelm one flank and manuever towards it with the landspeeders.... By turn 3 the enemy was usually in a hard place with 6 landspeeders threatening his rear armor and thus stalling any attack while the Las/Plas razorbacks presented a solid fire line.

List building is an important part of the game. It affords you the opportunity to maximise your armies strengths, and minimise your armies weaknesses. A well constructed army will have a lot of synergy between units and allow them to complement each other and hopefully be more effective than you would imagine.

An example is scout bikes, terminators, and a librarian with GOI, the scouts can get accross the board quickly, and then allow you to pinpoint move a powerful unit into your enemies back field. Where and when to pull of this trick is something that will be determined by the tempo of the battle, among other things, but in a vacuum, it is impossible to tell you when you should make the move. its impossible since every opponent is different, armies are all different, the battlefields are all different. but what you do have is the ability to engineer the trick into your army so you have the option of doing it if the siruation is favourable.

Likewise, since this trick is an inherent option in your army, your opponent will either miss it, and be unprepared, or he will notice it and either act to neutralise it immediately by eliminating one (or more) component, or try drawing you into a trap, lets say by leaving an obvious opening, waiting for you to take the bait, and then countering it.

Ultimately, the tactics you use will depend on the terrain and the army you are facing. i will fight a different battle facing guard than i will facing CSM's, and it will be different again if the CSM's are Iron warriors instead of Plague marines, or whatever. the best time to discuss tactics is immediately after a battle, when you can assess what has happened objectively.

Tactics can even be as small as when, if at all, to use psychic powers. A recent battle i was fighting i was facing thousand sons with my Imperial fists. As anyone will know, inferno bolts tear marines to pieces, and in 1000 points i was facing 2x 9 strong units. one unit was in the open, dangerously close to my lines, but in a position that if they were locked in combat, it would block LOS for several more units. I duly charged them with a depleted unit of terminators, led by a librarian with nullzone, and then declined to use my psychic power because i wanted the combat to be prolonged a little and totally throw a spanner into my opponents battleplan, he had more firepower than me, arguably a better deployment and so forth, and i was on the back foot. the 4 rounds the combat took to resolve allowed me to secure the win, if i had used Nullzone, the combat would likely have been over in 2 rounds, and the position would have been much trickier for me.

If that combat had been in a different location on the battlefield, i would very likely have use nullzone, and ended the combat more swiftly to free up my terminators, but as it was, i made the tactical choice to prolong the combat.
its highly highly unlikely that exact situation will arise again. that being the case, the more logical discussion to have is whether my terminators should run with a cyclone or an assault cannon, whether i should use hammernators over my current tactical termies, or whether i should even include them at all

 Kingsley wrote:
One thing that I've noticed is that, barring flagrant errors or extremely unbalanced matchups, the outcome of a game is typically decided by smart tactical play, not list composition. However, a lot of tactical discussion focuses on what list to take, not how to play.

To be honest, I support a different approach-- first, test a wide range of units and strategies until you find ones that you like to use and that fit well with your playstyle. Don't commit too early to certain units-- you may find that others suit your style better. For instance, in 5th edition everyone said that Predators were the optimal Space Marine Heavy Support choice, but through testing I found that I honestly preferred and did better with the then-humble Thunderfire Cannon.

Similarly, you have to play quite a few games with a unit before you have a good "feel" for it. For instance, I like to run a squad of ten Space Marine Scouts with bolters. A lot of people scoff at this unit or consider it bad-- and in some cases, it is! But in other cases it wins games for me, so I still run it despite the naysayers. If I had given up on this unit after my first few games with it (which were generally unexciting), I would be missing out on a tactical option that I've found to be very useful.

But once you've done a lot of testing and figured out what works well for you, keep your list more or less solid and focus more on tactics. When you encounter a new situation or an army you can't deal with-- first focus on changing your strategies, not your list, and then make tweaks as minor as possible in order to preserve your experience as best you can. It's certainly possible that new releases or types of opponents might cause you to have to vary your choices-- every new Codex, even if it doesn't apply directly to your primary or allied detachments, changes up the metagame-- but I for one advocate changing slowly and focusing on tactical play rather than list composition to win you games.

Here's a question. In what kind situations have you found your tactical marines useful. I've been playing a lot of different chaos marine builds and I'm having a tough time finding utilizing the humble chaos space marine. With the introduction of hull points it has become increasingly difficult to get marines across the table. Most of the weapons marines have are short ranged, so it's hard to get in range to use them. Then I end up having spent a lot points on marines to hang out in my deployment zone. If I give them a lascannon, then the marines have something to do, but that's an expensive way to bring lascannons.

I know that due to combat tactics and ATSKNF tactical marines and chaos marines are different beasts, but how does one use our 3+ chumps in this edition?

@bogalubov, re: chaos space marines.

How about:
Units of 10 in rhinos (destroyer blades possible combi flamer), with pistols / combat weapons and meltaguns. Keep or lose the bolters.
Three such units side by side. Throw in some supporting units bikes, spawn, raptors.

Power across the board in the first turn, with supporting keeping up. Seond turn support units assualt and everyone else deploys, ideally into cover or rhinos then move to block LOS' + lots of shooting. Turn three tankshocking + charging + mopping up.

If you're advancing out of your zone with them - then you could do with a unit to tie up with, deep strikers / infiltraters / outflankers. You don't walk them up to an ADL fortress without having given it a bit of a serious pounding from your support weapons.

I think you just need to have an idead of what you are going to do with them based on the build of the army (as mentioned lots on the post) and try to have a list which gives you lots of flexibility - Huron/Ahirman + deep strikers/quick reserves + spare transports and in larger games the awkward to get the most out of landraider.

I think I just went off on one.

Humble CSMs rule.

Another reason i think the discussion seems to focus on list building is that people ask for it. People often have topics like best load for x unit, is x unit competative, ect. These questions make sense because outside of specific matchups and circumstances it is easier and more useful to talk about tactics in a general way such as maximizing point efficiancy or creating synergy.

I think if people asked more questions about specific tactics, the discussion might not be as helpful but you would see more "this is how you should play x unit".

gpfunk wrote:Let's take for example your unit of ten bolter scouts. A good, tournament-going player will see the unit's abilities and capabilities. Infiltration, scout moves, scoring, good anti-infantry fire, and reliant on cover saves. They'll then take a unit from their optimized list to destroy it or remove its ability to affect the game. In the case of chaos this would probably be helldrake. So it won't matter how clever the placement of your scouts are or how craftily you use them. The choice is simply invalidated by another unit choice from a different codex. Of course, this is all a vaccum and won't be affected by list synergy, but you see my basic point.

I do pretty well in tournaments with those Scouts. Unusual isn't the same as bad, and they are far from "invalidated" by a Heldrake. In fact if someone trades a Heldrake for my Scouts, I'm pretty sure I'm up under normal circumstances.

gpfunk wrote:List building is extremely important at higher levels of play, and give extreme advantages to those at lower levels when facing unaware opponents.

I actually believe the reverse-- the better you are, the less it matters what your list is. Good players have been winning with unconventional lists for a long time now.

bogalubov wrote:Here's a question. In what kind situations have you found your tactical marines useful. I've been playing a lot of different chaos marine builds and I'm having a tough time finding utilizing the humble chaos space marine. With the introduction of hull points it has become increasingly difficult to get marines across the table. Most of the weapons marines have are short ranged, so it's hard to get in range to use them. Then I end up having spent a lot points on marines to hang out in my deployment zone. If I give them a lascannon, then the marines have something to do, but that's an expensive way to bring lascannons.

I typically use Combat Squads to split my Tactical Marine units in half. One half of the unit, with a special weapon and matching combi-weapon from the Sergeant, grabs a Rhino, while the other half brings a heavy weapon to the backfield. Without Combat Squads, heavy weapons in basic Marine squads are not very efficient. In the case of Chaos Marines I would play to your strengths and field two special weapons instead of one special and one heavy. For hanging out in the deployment zone, I'd rely on allies, cheap Cultists, or Noise Marines with blastmasters.

Pony_law wrote:Another reason i think the discussion seems to focus on list building is that people ask for it.

I agree. I'm trying to advocate people asking for other things.

I think part of the problem is that many of us have certain tactics we love to use with certain units, so the variety of answers is not great. Also, when you ask a question about a unit, invariable the most common answer you get is, don't take it.

That said, I'm game. Based on my recent experience with Leman Russ tanks, I am thinking of running one of these:

Leman Russ Vanquisher
Lascannon
Multi-Melta Sponsons
Pask

It's a lot of points, and so I want it to be the most effective possible and last as long as possible. So, does anyone have any tactical suggestions?

Bb

Well, as an Ork player our Tactics are quite limited, especially if we don't talk about list building.

Here goes:

Fast stuff moves straight towards enemy, Lootas hang back and shoot, Boyz walk up between fast stuff and Lootas for 2-3 wave / onlbjective taking.

The only other Tactics I could write about are counter tactics. What happens when I'm playing a list that charges me?

Usually move forward with bikes, measure exactly out 18", shoot, and sit there waiting for them to get closer. Worked great against Abbadon last week. Took a whole 1 wound off him before CC. Orks are very predictable so usually I just move it forward and react to what the opponent does.

Not much else I can do.

 Kingsley wrote:


I actually believe the reverse-- the better you are, the less it matters what your list is. Good players have been winning with unconventional lists for a long time now.

I absolutely agree with this. It's the Indian, not the arrow.

No, the arrow matters a great deal. Bent arrows are horrible even in the hands of master archers.

 Kingsley wrote:

I do pretty well in tournaments with those Scouts. Unusual isn't the same as bad, and they are far from "invalidated" by a Heldrake. In fact if someone trades a Heldrake for my Scouts, I'm pretty sure I'm up under normal circumstances.

They aren't trading a helldrake for your scouts. They're allocating one of the helldrake's many destructive turns to wiping them out. An AP3 torrent weapon will decimate those scouts, taking them completely out or crippling them pretty badly.

It's the idea of a hard counter. Light infantry that rely on cover are hard countered by a torrent weapon that ignores cover and their armor save. Optimized lists are generally full of these sorts of hard counters. Take the Vendetta for example. It's a hard counter to practically any vehicle on its own. It doesn't matter if you take an unusual IG choice like a Banewolf or a DevilDog, they'll both be utterly destroyed by that hard counter of three twin-linked lascannons on a tough, hard to hit platform.

gpfunk wrote:List building is extremely important at higher levels of play, and give extreme advantages to those at lower levels when facing unaware opponents.

So you think if you were the best player in the world then it wouldn't matter what you took because you could out-think and out-play your opponent utterly and completely? What if you were playing the second best player in the world and they took an optimized list? Would you be able to beat them regardless of list composition? Or does it matter to a certain appreciable degree? Like 25% of the match is decided by lists? Or 10%?

I actually believe the reverse-- the better you are, the less it matters what your list is. Good players have been winning with unconventional lists for a long time now.

So they've either been winning against local players, who may not always take optimized lists, or they've been playing in tournaments where a great many things come into play to determine the winner. Or they're incredibly lucky, of course.

Tournament results are a very small sample size to take from. In a tournament, people will play anywhere from 3 to 7 individual games and the winner will be whoever did the best out of those seven games. There are so many uncontrolled variables that can't be accounted for on that particular day and in those particular rounds. Maybe the winner played a game on round three and the opponent had to forfeit due to severe bowel discomfort. Seven experiments are a woefully low number if you want to extrapolate any useful data about anything.

I would put forth the idea that, if you took two equally skilled tournament going 40k players and sat them in a room and had them play 10,000 games, one has an optimized list and one has a non-optimized list...then the winner would be the person who was the luckiest and had the best list. Since they're veterans they would know most of the tactics involved in the game, and very little would surprise them. They'd know the capabilities of all the units, what they're used for, how best to use them. The optimized list would have the tools to handle it and the non-optimized one would either have no answer to, or a severely limited answer to the optimized list.

I guess I think that Warhammer 40k isn't deep and layered enough for general tactics to make list building less important. Tactics mostly involve playing the odds. You use tactics to play the odds as best you can, or to make your opponent play them worse (Thanks to a certain Guard commander for that one.) If you use a non-optimized list then you are putting yourself at a bigger disadvantage, you're making the odds longer for yourself from the start. That means smart/clever/unusual plays are more difficult to pull off, and probably impossible against a savvy opponent who isn't some fresh faced new comer.

You'd have to show me a player that consistently wins with non-optimized lists versus players of equal skill with optimized lists for me to believe that tactics were more important in the end game. I think JY2 would be a strong candidate, but even he doesn't pick things that are far and away unusual or underpowered.

It's a tall order, I know. I'd personally love it if discussion became more Tactics centric and less List centric, but in the end there are just some units that will always be better than others in almost every way. And taking units that aren't the best of the best is inherently putting you at a disadvantage at its most basic point, right?

Gork and Mork that's a wall of text. Sorry about that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

G. Whitenbeard wrote:

 Kingsley wrote:


I actually believe the reverse-- the better you are, the less it matters what your list is. Good players have been winning with unconventional lists for a long time now.

I absolutely agree with this. It's the Indian, not the arrow.

G. Whitenbeard wrote:

 Kingsley wrote:


I actually believe the reverse-- the better you are, the less it matters what your list is. Good players have been winning with unconventional lists for a long time now.

I absolutely agree with this. It's the Indian, not the arrow.

Martel732 wrote:No, the arrow matters a great deal. Bent arrows are horrible even in the hands of master archers.

That's my main point sort of summed up. Two master archers at the peak of their craft. One has a bent arrow, the other has a straight arrow. Who's going to win in the end?

 PipeAlley wrote:
Well, as an Ork player our Tactics are quite limited, especially if we don't talk about list building.

I don't believe that I can disagree more than with this statement.

Orks may have straitforward units, but it takes a solid tactician to make them really shine.

"That's my main point sort of summed up. Two master archers at the peak of their craft. One has a bent arrow, the other has a straight arrow. Who's going to win in the end? "

This is why if I really want to be competitive, I play Starcraft. Blizzard actually listens to player feedback and tries hard to make the game fair, even though the three armies are very different.

I get the distinct impression GW doesn't even pretend to attempt to try. Exhibit A: no Vendetta price change in Skies of Blood.

 Kingsley wrote:
One thing that I've noticed is that, barring flagrant errors or extremely unbalanced matchups, the outcome of a game is typically decided by smart tactical play, not list composition. However, a lot of tactical discussion focuses on what list to take, not how to play.

To be honest, I support a different approach-- first, test a wide range of units and strategies until you find ones that you like to use and that fit well with your playstyle. Don't commit too early to certain units-- you may find that others suit your style better. For instance, in 5th edition everyone said that Predators were the optimal Space Marine Heavy Support choice, but through testing I found that I honestly preferred and did better with the then-humble Thunderfire Cannon.

Similarly, you have to play quite a few games with a unit before you have a good "feel" for it. For instance, I like to run a squad of ten Space Marine Scouts with bolters. A lot of people scoff at this unit or consider it bad-- and in some cases, it is! But in other cases it wins games for me, so I still run it despite the naysayers. If I had given up on this unit after my first few games with it (which were generally unexciting), I would be missing out on a tactical option that I've found to be very useful.

But once you've done a lot of testing and figured out what works well for you, keep your list more or less solid and focus more on tactics. When you encounter a new situation or an army you can't deal with-- first focus on changing your strategies, not your list, and then make tweaks as minor as possible in order to preserve your experience as best you can. It's certainly possible that new releases or types of opponents might cause you to have to vary your choices-- every new Codex, even if it doesn't apply directly to your primary or allied detachments, changes up the metagame-- but I for one advocate changing slowly and focusing on tactical play rather than list composition to win you games.

I'm going to guess that my post in the forum had something to do with this post, an explanation:

Whenever somebody looks for tactics to deal with X...one of the first questions usually asked is "do you have Y?" In my case, dealing with kiting DE Skimmers (X), I was lacking long range firepower (Y).

The reason for my post wasn't a "Build my list" post, rather, I was looking for feedback on the various SM HS options, as I rarely see them discussed often, and less so in a specific situation (Vulkan army lists). I was also attempting to confirm if Vulkan works better in a Drop Pod list and shouldn't really be used as Mech.

I was trying to explain list bulding vs tactics to this guy I played last Friday. He is really indecisive and took 45 min to write up a list and then quit on turn 4 due to getting hosed. He didn't get that he was the reason for his loss, not his list. All he could focus on was what he needed to change in his list to win. No amount of uber unit choices will give you a win if you have no tactical thinking.

On the other hand you need to be in it to win it. You can be a formula one race car driver but your not going to win any races taking a car with significantly less HP than your rivals.

I guess the third factor (1 being army list, 2 being tactics) is luck, you need the dice to favor you.

No tactical thinking: my opponents putting stuff in reserve for no apparent reason and then wondering how they got tabled or crushed up piecemeal.

 TheLionOfTheForest wrote:
I was trying to explain list bulding vs tactics to this guy I played last Friday. He is really indecisive and took 45 min to write up a list and then quit on turn 4 due to getting hosed. He didn't get that he was the reason for his loss, not his list. All he could focus on was what he needed to change in his list to win. No amount of uber unit choices will give you a win if you have no tactical thinking.

On the other hand you need to be in it to win it. You can be a formula one race car driver but your not going to win any races taking a car with significantly less HP than your rivals.

I guess the third factor (1 being army list, 2 being tactics) is luck, you need the dice to favor you.

The fourth factor is practice.

practice, practice, practice

Tactics focuses on list building because 40k is a game with very little tactical depth. Once you've created an optimized list it's usually pretty self-explanatory how to play it. Sure, there might be subtle variations in execution (in exact situation X do I move my assault unit forward 6" or 5.5"?) but it's hard to have a meaningful discussion about that one specific event in isolation. So discussion focuses on building a better list, and that last 10% of skill is developed through experience.

nobody wrote:
I'm going to guess that my post in the forum had something to do with this post, an explanation:

Whenever somebody looks for tactics to deal with X...one of the first questions usually asked is "do you have Y?" In my case, dealing with kiting DE Skimmers (X), I was lacking long range firepower (Y).

The reason for my post wasn't a "Build my list" post, rather, I was looking for feedback on the various SM HS options, as I rarely see them discussed often, and less so in a specific situation (Vulkan army lists). I was also attempting to confirm if Vulkan works better in a Drop Pod list and shouldn't really be used as Mech.

If you look at the timestamps, you'll find that actually I posted this thread a few hours prior to yours. You may also note that my main recommendation had to do with different tactics for your Stormtalons rather than changes to the list.

gpfunk wrote:They aren't trading a helldrake for your scouts. They're allocating one of the helldrake's many destructive turns to wiping them out. An AP3 torrent weapon will decimate those scouts, taking them completely out or crippling them pretty badly.

In the context of my army, a Heldrake won't have all that many destructive turns to get. Typically I've found that Heldrakes only get 1-3 shots off against me (depending on situational factors), so each one has to count. If a Drake uses two of those shots to kill a Scout squad, that may very well be a good deal.

gpfunk wrote:It's the idea of a hard counter. Light infantry that rely on cover are hard countered by a torrent weapon that ignores cover and their armor save.

I don't consider Scouts to rely on cover and most of the time I don't use it with them unless facing large amounts of AP4 weapons. T4 4+ and 10 bodies is sufficient protection against most small arms. To be honest, I don't think 40k has very many "hard counters," certainly fewer than many other popular games.

Tactics is situation dependent whereas lists are absolutes.

Internet forums do not lend itself to situation dependent abstract talk. Now if people start posting battle reports and asking what should I have done here? Then we could talk tactics. Actually that might not be a terrible idea. What do I do with _ list against _ list with a deployment like _.

 Peregrine wrote:
Tactics focuses on list building because 40k is a game with very little tactical depth. Once you've created an optimized list it's usually pretty self-explanatory how to play it. Sure, there might be subtle variations in execution (in exact situation X do I move my assault unit forward 6" or 5.5"?) but it's hard to have a meaningful discussion about that one specific event in isolation. So discussion focuses on building a better list, and that last 10% of skill is developed through experience.

I do not agree with you at all there. 40K is exactly as tactical as you make it. I used to play with a group who would bluff with their lists to try and get you to bring the wrong stuff and use basic psychological warfare techniques to unnerve the opponent. It was actually pretty fun, except the noise and light concentration disruption, that was kind of annoying.

Of course some of this requires certain houserules like if you only let your opponent see your list when the at the top of first turn. It also requires a board with some good LoS blocking terrain on it so you have to choose do I move in a straight line or do I follow this piece of terrain loosing a turn of possible assault.

Blind setup can also be really fun and the FW modules are nice to spice things up. You can also try points bidding, bid so much handicap to get to setup the board and so many points to go first, etc.

Straight up 40K with the book terrain rules is the vanilla ice cream of 40K, non offensive but bland.

The main issue with discussing tactics is the medium. Its not so easy to set up a proper tactical discussion via this medium.

An earlier example of chess was made - lets see what we can extrapolate from chess.

In chess, books describe tactics relative to specific positions and games. These specific positions are useful due to the static nature of the board setup. In contrast, game boards for 40k have a very dynamic and non-fixed character. Not only might each army be comprised of very different units, but they also interact differently with each other unit (as opposed to chess where the interaction is fixed).

The total number of positions in 40k is exponentially above the astronomical number in chess. This makes it harder to find positions which demonstrates concepts.

If you really want to talk tactics, you need to bring up specific board positions with diagrams. Anything else is general strategy concepts.