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perhaps a challenge? I'm not talking about tournaments, because this may not work in such an environment. After a game, switch armies with your opponent. This allows you to see if the win is list or general-ship. Even better, set it up before hand with your opponent, then you know what you are getting into, and won't bring something that you don't know the weaknesses of.

Again, what people seem to be referring to as tactics are actually strategies.

Chess has no tactical value at all, only strategy. There is no adapting to the unexpected in chess. If you're adapting to the unexpected, you're already losing, because your opponent's strategy has circumvented yours. Your strategy has failed, and it's a matter of time. There is no random, so everything is strategic. You can predict exactly what the outcome of your action is going to be when you take it. You can predict the results of your opponent's actions. Chess measures a person's ability to plan and execute a strategy, in opposition to his opponent's ability to plan and execute a strategy. If I can accurately plan 5 moves ahead, and you can only accurately plan 4, I'm going to win.

40k, on the other hand, has plenty of random. What will I do if this attack fails, or if this slim-to-none shot actually succeeds? That is a tactical game, and every time you take an action, you should be considering your future actions based on the unpredictable results. 40k measures a person's ability to craft a strategy, and then react to the unpredictable, in opposition to an opponent's ability to craft a strategy, and then react to the unpredictable. That is what tactics are, the ability to adapt one's strategy in light of unpredictable outcomes.

Taking a Netlist provides what should be a solid anchor in a winning strategy. If 40k were a purely strategic game, then the best crafted list would nearly every game, when piloted by equally skilled opponents. This would be like assigning points values to Chess pieces, and then allowing a player to choose the pieces they wanted to play, and allowing them to place them on their "deployment zone" as they wished, the perfect balance of strategy would be lost, and it would become a tactical deployment game, after which strategy based on the starting layout would begin... which would be a lot tougher, if I do say so.

Strategies permit tactics. If I don't take any S8+ weapons, or Melta Weapons, I can't destroy AV 14 vehicles. My strategy [list building] limits my tactical options to try not to get pounded too hard. If I have a handful of suitable weapons, I must decide between risking failure, or trying to not get pounded too hard. If I have plenty of suitable weapons, I have to decide if there's any reason to NOT destroy that AV 14 vehicle... maybe there are larger threats?

A person complaining of limited tactical options is likely taking a list that limits such options. If a unit has poor damage output, or is too flimsy for it's cost, what else could you do with it, to make it worth it's points? For example, the Guard codex has Scions [Formerly Storm Troopers] that simply don't pull their weight when it comes to damage output for their cost. Compared to Carapace Vets, they don't work. But they do have the option to deep strike, and fairly safely in the grand scheme of things. Guard doesn't have much that can move quickly, so how do I claim distant objectives?

Well, in 7th, I can allow for a strategy that has me drop a couple small units of "overpriced" Scions onto an objective that I couldn't reach otherwise with Chimera Vets. By changing my strategy from pure kill'em all to how can I get an objective on the other side of the board, I can suddenly find valuable tactical options in the Scions that aren't just what they can kill, but where they can move to.

I've been playing 40k for almost 20 years now, and between changing editions and codices, and my own development as a gamer, I've never had a shortage of tactical options to explore, but I don't limit my strategies to how fast I can kill something.

greatbigtree, that's one of the best posts I've read in a while.

I wouldn't agree to labeling chess as purely strategic, though. The employ of different chess pieces in certain ways can be viewed as tactical options.

For 40k I can just fully agree to this:

 greatbigtree wrote:
I've never had a shortage of tactical options to explore, but I don't limit my strategies to how fast I can kill something.

And I guess the main problem of this discussion is that some people DO limit themselves to that point of view.

 Murenius wrote:
greatbigtree, that's one of the best posts I've read in a while.

I wouldn't agree to labeling chess as purely strategic, though. The employ of different chess pieces in certain ways can be viewed as tactical options.

For 40k I can just fully agree to this:

 greatbigtree wrote:
I've never had a shortage of tactical options to explore, but I don't limit my strategies to how fast I can kill something.

And I guess the main problem of this discussion is that some people DO limit themselves to that point of view.

But the thing is, he's right. Chess is never random, ever. There are no variables that someone who knows the game will not be aware of. There's no chance that when moved correctly one piece can take any other piece, chance simply doesn't factor into chess. Each piece has it's own defined set of rules and they don't change depending on the situation they're placed, whereas with 40k there are no defined roles for anything in any army. Something that is used for melee purposes can be used to shoot with only mild tweaking, and with the introduction of dice rolling to resolve every aspect of combat...well, you get the idea.

Also, have an exalt greatbigtree! Loved the post.

 Frankenberry wrote:
But the thing is, he's right. Chess is never random, ever. There are no variables that someone who knows the game will not be aware of. There's no chance that when moved correctly one piece can take any other piece, chance simply doesn't factor into chess. Each piece has it's own defined set of rules and they don't change depending on the situation they're placed, whereas with 40k there are no defined roles for anything in any army. Something that is used for melee purposes can be used to shoot with only mild tweaking, and with the introduction of dice rolling to resolve every aspect of combat...well, you get the idea.

Also, have an exalt greatbigtree! Loved the post.

you know, I thought this about chess, and then I'm playing a game and castles their king or makes a horizontal kill with a pawn. I would have thought that those moves were illegal, until someone tells me that they are legal, but don't explain the limitations of those moves. then I try it in another game, and I'm told I cannot make that move because the move is illegal. Makes me sort of wonder if the game is like 'bs' and sometimes I wonder whether 40k is like that particular card game as well.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
The OP's sentiments aren't new. "40K is a better game when people use cover" is more or less the consensus. I don't see how this thread is related to the tactics forum, though.

In any case. Yeah, matches are always better with more cover, and units like jump-units do in-fact seem to be built around using it.

In my experience though, throwing around LoS-blockers isn't as easy and well-accepted as asserted though. In my experience, putting down lots of terrain and LOS-blockers can be perceived as being almost as skeezy as modeling for advantage, or list-tailoring. Case in point:

Spoiler:

This is a map that I played a 2v2 on awhile back. Throughout the course of the entire game, my two opponents were complaining about the map. Why? Because they were both playing gunlines. (Imperial Guard and Imperial Fists, specifically). Their units spent the entire game in their deployment zone, and eventually all died there, and the players felt that the map too greatly favored my fast-moving mono-khorne Daemons list, as all the terrain more or less prevented them from bringing the full force of their armies to bare on my units until around turn 3.

On the flip-side, I've played this same army before and gotten wrecked by an Eldar 'reaper heavy list because the map we played on had only a single piece of terrain outside of the our deployment zones, a little tower on the left hand side that was just big enough to hide a single unit of raptors if I clumped them all up. So, you have the opposite situation there.

I play almost exclusively pure-assault armies in a meta that's almost exclusively Necrons, Imperial Guard, Tau and Space Marines. So it's really not easy to advocate maps that are heavy in cover. We either play with cover-heavy maps, which pretty much benefits only me, or we play maps that are cover-scarce, which almost entirely benefits my opponent. It's never a good feeling to be in a situation where your opponent has a massively inherent advantage on you.

I forgot where I was going with this, so I'll just let it stop here for now.

That map has way too much cover though.
It's strongly favoring assault armies.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
People who think 40K is tactically shallow have no idea.

The first time I played 40K (end of 4th to beginning of 5th), I invented at least three tactics using units that everyone had been using for ages.

The second time (now), I'm also constantly creating new combos, deployment strategies and other things.


To me, 40K is mostly virgin, a lot of its potential has not been discovered yet, and this is in part due to the fact that games take a while and the hobby takes even more time.


The thing is that most 40K players turn to the net or others to be told what is good, almost never create anything competitive themselves, and usually consider the game "complete" because it's been played for so long.

If you keep on challenging the status quo, you will discover better optimization points, which you may bring to a tournament and be the first to use (Tony Kopach this year at Nova won with an unexpected list - although he was really lucky the Iyanden star got zero spells but that's the problem of stars).

They should rename the Tactics forum to Hard Counters/Cheese.

morgoth wrote:

That map has way too much cover though.
It's strongly favoring assault armies.

People who think 40K is tactically shallow have no idea.The first time I played 40K (end of 4th to beginning of 5th), I invented at least three tactics using units that everyone had been using for ages.

The second time (now), I'm also constantly creating new combos, deployment strategies and other things.

To me, 40K is mostly virgin, a lot of its potential has not been discovered yet, and this is in part due to the fact that games take a while and the hobby takes even more time.

The thing is that most 40K players turn to the net or others to be told what is good, almost never create anything competitive themselves, and usually consider the game "complete" because it's been played for so long.

If you keep on challenging the status quo, you will discover better optimization points, which you may bring to a tournament and be the first to use (Tony Kopach this year at Nova won with an unexpected list - although he was really lucky the Iyanden star got zero spells but that's the problem of stars).

Concerning that map: I think player are just prone to say "it is the way I see it right now", especially if they have no means to deal with it at the ready. For example, instead of saying "this map disfavours shooty armies" there are multiple other ways to see it. E.g. "The shooty player has an imbalanced army and should have taken a better mix to deal with something like this". Or one could discuss the use of linebreaker units, an ability strongly disregarded by many players even in tournament. Lychguards are considered too expensive and useless and you should just take more shooting. In such a situation, where you have to position your shooties in the road and they get charged even 5 Lychguards can provide the necessary holdup and protection. Anyway, I guess you get my point.

Other than that I fully agree to you. In the last time I noticed several discussions here where 40k players here compared to Magic: The Gathering and claimed things are better there. I played MTG in national and international tournaments and have to say it is exactly like you mentioned. People use optimised netlists until some skilled player comes up with a new idea that uses the netlist mono-culture. And with 40k it is similar. People claiming the opposite should have a close look at the NOVA lists and matches. One player had an Eldar list without Wave Serpents (!!1!) and it performed quite well. If everyone takes things you need against WS and you don't play them you render a part of the opponent's units less useful. But many players do not seem to consider the meta and those mindgames as part of the game.

 greatbigtree wrote:
I've been playing 40k for almost 20 years now, and between changing editions and codices, and my own development as a gamer, I've never had a shortage of tactical options to explore, but I don't limit my strategies to how fast I can kill something.

Good post. However, what applies to scions doesn't apply to every unit in the game. The thing you were addressing is flexibility, which is very valuable. Having more options is what make you win games which do not go according to your strategy - assuming you can apply those options. Sadly, due to bad game design, sometimes you have models which aren't worth their points at all. Sometimes you pay too much for flexibility you rarely need, sometimes the unit isn't survivable enough to use either its strength or its flexibility or at worst the unit isn't good at fulfilling its primary function at all.

In order to decide if a unit is useful, you can't just look at its offensive capabilities - durability and flexibility are just as important. What's most important is the price you pay for the whole package though, both points and opportunity cost. A strong and flexible choice doesn't do you any good if you would get more options by just fielding two different units for the same points. Sometime picking the more flexible choice prevent you from picking the outright more powerful choice. Depending on the power of the second choice, flexibility might become irrelevant, HQ choices and the crowded slots of many armies suffer from this.

 Jidmah wrote:

Good post. However, what applies to scions doesn't apply to every unit in the game. The thing you were addressing is flexibility, which is very valuable. Having more options is what make you win games which do not go according to your strategy - assuming you can apply those options. Sadly, due to bad game design, sometimes you have models which aren't worth their points at all. Sometimes you pay too much for flexibility you rarely need, sometimes the unit isn't survivable enough to use either its strength or its flexibility or at worst the unit isn't good at fulfilling its primary function at all.

In order to decide if a unit is useful, you can't just look at its offensive capabilities - durability and flexibility are just as important. What's most important is the price you pay for the whole package though, both points and opportunity cost. A strong and flexible choice doesn't do you any good if you would get more options by just fielding two different units for the same points. Sometime picking the more flexible choice prevent you from picking the outright more powerful choice. Depending on the power of the second choice, flexibility might become irrelevant, HQ choices and the crowded slots of many armies suffer from this.

But doesn't this come down to the conclusion that it's not the ruleset that's responsible for some units not being viable, but instead the game situations by the players? Couldn't we see it the way, that players tend to see a battlefield favouring shooty units as normal, one that favours assault as unbalanced and so on? A real TAC list would have to be able to accommodate for unusual battlefields as well. Raptors being one of those "overpriced units" would immediately be worth their points if you had to expect a map rich with impassable terrain. Just imagine a tournament where a mandatory map layout is some sort of ravine with bridges, creating 3 chokepoints, and some mountains so that you can't shoot at the advancing troops from all other points. The whole meta would have to change.

Hear, hear.

The level of conversation in threads on the tactics forum seems to degenerate quickly into points about whether a unit is OP or useless. Things are rarely that black and white and the dialog needs to improve.

It is frustrating when you share your thoughts about how to use a unit and a string of posters immediately begin dismissing your points without actually offering any actual insights. This kind of dialog is really a form of thread hijacking, as it changes a thread instantly from a conversation to noise.

As a community, we should police ourselves and speak up when we recognize this happening.

Here's the kind of thing that gets to me. I used to run a Jump Pack Chaos Lord. Every time I mention him, there's a string of posters who complain that he's not on a bike, where he would get the +1 toughness. The big advantage of having a jump pack is being able to bypass terrain instead of going around it, which is important for a melee unit and sometimes more important than +1 T.

Try making that point in the tactics forum and see what happens...

That kind of terrain would just make units being able to ignore/push through/block choke-points more valuable, while making those who can't less valuable.
For example some units would be completely unable to cross the board, especially horde units like cultists and fast units like the maulerfiend would get stuck in the choke-points, unable to reach their targets.
Raptors also wouldn't become better in comparison to other units that have the similar abilities, like warp spiders, riptides or a daemon prince.

We usually have some kind terrain on our boards which can be jumped on easily, but is hard or impossible to climb with regular troops (buildings with flat roofs, stone pillars, a mountain with a plateau on top). It adds tactical depth, but it still doesn't make heavily overcosted jump units any better. It mostly benefits those units who were already good before, like wave serpents or koptaz.

Especially on the issue of jump troops, GW has simply been overcharging for their flexibility. They kind of got it right with storm boyz, but they are outdone by our bikers, which are even more powerful and more flexible at a reasonable price.

 techsoldaten wrote:
Hear, hear.

The level of conversation in threads on the tactics forum seems to degenerate quickly into points about whether a unit is OP or useless. Things are rarely that black and white and the dialog needs to improve.

It is frustrating when you share your thoughts about how to use a unit and a string of posters immediately begin dismissing your points without actually offering any actual insights. This kind of dialog is really a form of thread hijacking, as it changes a thread instantly from a conversation to noise.

As a community, we should police ourselves and speak up when we recognize this happening.

Here's the kind of thing that gets to me. I used to run a Jump Pack Chaos Lord. Every time I mention him, there's a string of posters who complain that he's not on a bike, where he would get the +1 toughness. The big advantage of having a jump pack is being able to bypass terrain instead of going around it, which is important for a melee unit and sometimes more important than +1 T.

Try making that point in the tactics forum and see what happens...

I think the criticism of JP troops comes from two directions:

1) Most people don't play on tables that contain a great deal of LOS-blocking terrain. If there isn't any LOS-block terrain, a Biker can move through it pretty much just as easily as someone with a JP.

2) Assuming inherent variance in the amount and type of terrain you see on tables, then you tend to favor the unit with better stat lines because then a unit's superiority doesn't depend in situational factors like terrain.


What we see very often is, "My friend's Eldar are killing me! He's got 2 Wraithknights and 6 Wave Serpents with Aspect Warriors inside and I don't know how to deal with them!"

We NEVER see, "My friend's Eldar are killing me, if we have a table with a big piece of LOS-blocking terrain in the center, how should I use it to my advantage?"

 techsoldaten wrote:
Here's the kind of thing that gets to me. I used to run a Jump Pack Chaos Lord. Every time I mention him, there's a string of posters who complain that he's not on a bike, where he would get the +1 toughness. The big advantage of having a jump pack is being able to bypass terrain instead of going around it, which is important for a melee unit and sometimes more important than +1 T.

Without having any knowledge of that particular issue, have you ever considered that they might be right? Have you actually tried running your chaos lord on a bike? Against multiple different opponents?

The tactics forum is about ways to win game. If you put up unit choices for discussion, the other posters would be a bad help if they didn't advice you to use better units. If you want advice on how to run a particular unit, and people suggest to drop them, you're completely within your right to tell them that the choice is not up for discussion. On the other hand, you shouldn't advice people to use units that you like but aren't the most competitive choice, you wont help anyone by convincing them to buy sub-optimal units just because you like them.

 Jidmah wrote:
That kind of terrain would just make units being able to ignore/push through/block choke-points more valuable, while making those who can't less valuable.
For example some units would be completely unable to cross the board, especially horde units like cultists and fast units like the maulerfiend would get stuck in the choke-points, unable to reach their targets.
Raptors also wouldn't become better in comparison to other units that have the similar abilities, like warp spiders, riptides or a daemon prince.

Sure, but why is this so unacceptable? You're expected to accept a shooty-favouring terrain which renders slow assault units unusable.

In a hypothetical meta-environment where all relevant game mechanisms appear in equal amounts you would always have some units in your game that appear "useless". It is a part of the strategic and tactic challenge to use your less applicable units in the most benefiting way.

In a part the use of flyers since they were introduced shows exactly that situation. But while the above only happens if TO and/or players agree or prescribe terrain that benefits certain abilities flyers and non-flyers just appear automatically since people just include them in their lists. The triangle flyer - anti air - regular unit could abstractly be viewed as different layers of the battlefield which influence how units can interact.

Unacceptable? Not at all, I love playing on cluttered boards with unusual terrain. One of the larger stores here has a city of death board that has hardly any open terrain at all, playing on it shakes up the game big time and is a lot of fun.

I'm just saying that different terrain won't fix units that are inherently bad, only those that are slightly below/above the curve. One of the most powerful armies currently is eldar, your change of scenery would change zero about that, since the best armies already have nothing but jet bikes, skimmers and jumping MCs.

I get your theory, but I don't think it translates well into practice.

 Jidmah wrote:
Unacceptable? Not at all, I love playing on cluttered boards with unusual terrain. One of the larger stores here has a city of death board that has hardly any open terrain at all, playing on it shakes up the game big time and is a lot of fun.

I'm just saying that different terrain won't fix units that are inherently bad, only those that are slightly below/above the curve. One of the most powerful armies currently is eldar, your change of scenery would change zero about that, since the best armies already have nothing but jet bikes, skimmers and jumping MCs.

I get your theory, but I don't think it translates well into practice.

Actually I don't think Eldar stand a good chance on that board. Not against orks or other CC armies.

morgoth wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
Unacceptable? Not at all, I love playing on cluttered boards with unusual terrain. One of the larger stores here has a city of death board that has hardly any open terrain at all, playing on it shakes up the game big time and is a lot of fun.

I'm just saying that different terrain won't fix units that are inherently bad, only those that are slightly below/above the curve. One of the most powerful armies currently is eldar, your change of scenery would change zero about that, since the best armies already have nothing but jet bikes, skimmers and jumping MCs.

I get your theory, but I don't think it translates well into practice.

Actually I don't think Eldar stand a good chance on that board. Not against orks or other CC armies.

Some Eldar armies would do fine but it would require a level of list building prowess that goes beyond spamming Wave Serpents, Wraith Knights and Fire Dragons.

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:


I think the criticism of JP troops comes from two directions:

1) Most people don't play on tables that contain a great deal of LOS-blocking terrain. If there isn't any LOS-block terrain, a Biker can move through it pretty much just as easily as someone with a JP.

2) Assuming inherent variance in the amount and type of terrain you see on tables, then you tend to favor the unit with better stat lines because then a unit's superiority doesn't depend in situational factors like terrain.

Yep, I totally agree and think this is the way it works for most posters.

It's not like I am expecting people to consider each and every possible table configuration to talk about it, but there's this huge difference between that and just saying the JP CL sucks.

Another example to think about is Warp Talons and the "common logic" they are overcosted. They very well may be, but what do you do with them when you have them in a list? What are they actually good at? You don't get an answer for that on Dakka Dakka, you get a breakdown of points and advice to pick something else.

Tactics means tactics, not list building. There's another forum for that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Jidmah wrote:

Without having any knowledge of that particular issue, have you ever considered that they might be right? Have you actually tried running your chaos lord on a bike? Against multiple different opponents?

I don't think "right" really enters into it.

There is no right or wrong here, tactics are a question of how you can use a specific unit to fulfill a mission. There are tactics that work, ones that don't, and "use something else" isn't really a valid answer. Repeating that dozens of times really only stops conversations from happening. I mean, say it once, the problem comes in when people start arguing about it endlessly.

We all have reservations about fielding certain units, but wouldn't it be more interesting to actually have conversations about how other people use their armies?

 Jidmah wrote:

The tactics forum is about ways to win game. If you put up unit choices for discussion, the other posters would be a bad help if they didn't advice you to use better units. If you want advice on how to run a particular unit, and people suggest to drop them, you're completely within your right to tell them that the choice is not up for discussion. On the other hand, you shouldn't advice people to use units that you like but aren't the most competitive choice, you wont help anyone by convincing them to buy sub-optimal units just because you like them.

This I don't get. If the only way to win games is to pick the right units, why even have a tactics forum?

I don't think anyone is trying to trick the community into choosing sub-optimal units, the point it to talk about how any particular unit could be used. Again... tactics.

 techsoldaten wrote:

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:


I think the criticism of JP troops comes from two directions:

1) Most people don't play on tables that contain a great deal of LOS-blocking terrain. If there isn't any LOS-block terrain, a Biker can move through it pretty much just as easily as someone with a JP.

2) Assuming inherent variance in the amount and type of terrain you see on tables, then you tend to favor the unit with better stat lines because then a unit's superiority doesn't depend in situational factors like terrain.

Yep, I totally agree and think this is the way it works for most posters.

It's not like I am expecting people to consider each and every possible table configuration to talk about it, but there's this huge difference between that and just saying the JP CL sucks.

Another example to think about is Warp Talons and the "common logic" they are overcosted. They very well may be, but what do you do with them when you have them in a list? What are they actually good at? You don't get an answer for that on Dakka Dakka, you get a breakdown of points and advice to pick something else.

Tactics means tactics, not list building. There's another forum for that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Jidmah wrote:

Without having any knowledge of that particular issue, have you ever considered that they might be right? Have you actually tried running your chaos lord on a bike? Against multiple different opponents?

I don't think "right" really enters into it.

There is no right or wrong here, tactics are a question of how you can use a specific unit to fulfill a mission. There are tactics that work, ones that don't, and "use something else" isn't really a valid answer. Repeating that dozens of times really only stops conversations from happening. I mean, say it once, the problem comes in when people start arguing about it endlessly.

We all have reservations about fielding certain units, but wouldn't it be more interesting to actually have conversations about how other people use their armies?

 Jidmah wrote:

The tactics forum is about ways to win game. If you put up unit choices for discussion, the other posters would be a bad help if they didn't advice you to use better units. If you want advice on how to run a particular unit, and people suggest to drop them, you're completely within your right to tell them that the choice is not up for discussion. On the other hand, you shouldn't advice people to use units that you like but aren't the most competitive choice, you wont help anyone by convincing them to buy sub-optimal units just because you like them.

This I don't get. If the only way to win games is to pick the right units, why even have a tactics forum?

I don't think anyone is trying to trick the community into choosing sub-optimal units, the point it to talk about how any particular unit could be used. Again... tactics.

I agree with everything you said here, and have an Exalt! Tactics is more than just determining the best durability/damage to points ratio and duplicating that unit as many times as possible, and 99/100 times a unit that is not the mathematical best can have just as much impact on a game as the units people insist are superior in every way!

On side note of terrain, the key thing people miss is solid, LOS blocking terrain. Buildings, hills, stacks of books, whatever, they go far more towards balancing the game than ruins/woods ect. I typically play with 6-8 6-9" square LoS blockers as well as scatter terrain, and have no issues with shooting or mêlée being OP (that impassible tower block is just as much a hindrance to an assault unit as it is to a shooter)

 techsoldaten wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

The tactics forum is about ways to win game. If you put up unit choices for discussion, the other posters would be a bad help if they didn't advice you to use better units. If you want advice on how to run a particular unit, and people suggest to drop them, you're completely within your right to tell them that the choice is not up for discussion. On the other hand, you shouldn't advice people to use units that you like but aren't the most competitive choice, you wont help anyone by convincing them to buy sub-optimal units just because you like them.

This I don't get. If the only way to win games is to pick the right units, why even have a tactics forum?

I don't think anyone is trying to trick the community into choosing sub-optimal units, the point it to talk about how any particular unit could be used. Again... tactics.

That is true sometimes, but sometimes, it's not.

For example, in the ork codex buggies and koptaz are pretty close, both have up- and downsides, so the choice of picking one or the other. However, when it comes to picking a Big Mek with a Tellyporta Blasta, you can pretty much guarantee that any army with another HQ in that slot will do better, no matter how you use that unit.

The game has pretty bad internal balance, for that reason picking the right list will do a lot more towards winning the game than strategic finesse.

There is a really good example of this issue in a thread about Grots in this same forum.

There are a lot of people discussing hypothetical tactics for the grots and then there are other people coming along just clinging to what I call "the BoLS method" of evaluating units (It's a very simple flowchart. Maybe I should make it, eh?). They talk about every unit like it is never in cover, never supported, alone on the board, and that on the other side of the board are an infinite wave of the best units in the game for killing it.

 Paradigm wrote:


2) How do I use X?- this is the kind of discussion that does involve a lot more consideration of unit movements, supporting units, terrain allowances and the nature of the meta and opponent. Often, the OP is aware of the shortcomings, If any, of the unit in question, and is looking to mitigate them. For example, if the thread is titled ' how do I use IG Devil Dogs?', the answer is never 'use a vendetta'. The Vendetta may be an objectively superior unit, offering greater range, firepower, mobility, and durability to the Dog, as well as sharing the FOC slot and Anti-tank role of the Devil Dog, but that's not the question. Hence, the answer most useful to all concerned will involve how to mitigate the relative lack of Durability (for example, using multiple AV12 vehicles to provide armour saturation), how to best utilise it's weaponry (so a discussion on target priority) and how it complements an army composition ( by considering the role it performs and how this can support/be supported by the army as a whole).
.

Yes! Yes! Yes!

People often want to know how best to use a particular model or unit. Being told don't take "X", take "Y" is rarely helpful unless someone is only interested in building the absolutely best army.

It's much more useful to get insights into the units we already own, or have painted or just like the looks of.

You can abide by the rule of cool and still want to improve your game

There are no real tactics in 40k. 40k is mostly decided in the list-building phase, which already got an own sub-forum dedicated to it, and the rest mostly boils down to rolling the dice. There are general strategies such as when to assault with what or what to prioritize with shooting, but in general, 40k is about as deep as a Miley Cyrus song.

 Sigvatr wrote:
There are no real tactics in 40k. 40k is mostly decided in the list-building phase, which already got an own sub-forum dedicated to it, and the rest mostly boils down to rolling the dice. There are general strategies such as when to assault with what or what to prioritize with shooting, but in general, 40k is about as deep as a Miley Cyrus song.

No, not really. This thread has quite some posts contradicting your statement with arguments while you just state an opinion. You could say a Miley Cyrus song would contribute more depth to the discussion...

Basically people need to either, A: Include all the information when posting a tactics question (so, correct posting 101) or B: People need to realize that responses for 'tactics' threads for 40k will always devolve into 'get rid of that gakky list and use a net list' sort of replies.

Either way, WAVE SERPENTS ARE OP, NERF.

This has been a really interesting read. I can definitely see both sides of the argument. As someone else mentioned, it's incredibly difficult to discuss tactics in a forum because so much of that discussion relies on what the board looks like, the disposition of your units, how early or late in the game you are, etc. It's much easier to have the kind of discussion we're used to on this forum where we evaluate units in a vacuum. Unfortunately I don't see an easy way around that particular problem, which sucks because I happen to think 40K does leave room for tactical play and it seems others here do as well.

 Fenris Frost wrote:
There is a really good example of this issue in a thread about Grots in this same forum.

There are a lot of people discussing hypothetical tactics for the grots and then there are other people coming along just clinging to what I call "the BoLS method" of evaluating units (It's a very simple flowchart. Maybe I should make it, eh?). They talk about every unit like it is never in cover, never supported, alone on the board, and that on the other side of the board are an infinite wave of the best units in the game for killing it.

Actually, on dakkadakka most discussions assume that whatever unit the current poster favors is always in cover, supported and will generally be unharmed, while all other units which oppose the posters opinion are generally out in the open and will draw attention of the entire enemy army right away. This is what's happening in the gretchin thread. Half the people are arguing that gretchin are awesome because the opponent doesn't have guns to shoot them, once you switch out those gretchin for koptaz, buggies or lobbas, your opponent somehow magically gains additional firepower to gun them down.

There's an easy way around it.

Take a situation, discuss it.

For example, there was a battle report with jy2 playing eldar against a Dark Eldar player.

At the start of turn 2 (or 3, I don't care), the Eldar pretty much lost the game by making a huge tactical mistake.

So I went and worked on a screenshot of that to see just how much better that situation could have been played.

I think that was genuinely interesting and tactical, but then I did not share it in the 40K tactics forum.

Yes, for real tactical discussions this would be invaluable. The main problem is probably the effort that is necessary to create the reports and communicate the situation to the readers. Oh. and I guess it might be a problem that people usually have a problem with accepting the fact that they made a mistake

It would be so great to have an applet in this forum where you can set up interactive battle reports, where everyone can show their tactics.