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What's the big flaw in your playstyle that costs you games? How do you compensate? Why do you see it as your biggest struggle?

Only by examining your weaknesses can we become stronger.

Nobody may comment in this thread unless they first post their own struggles. Don't criticize others before examining yourself.

I often get demoralized by early losses. Spending the time to build and paint a new, impressive model or models, I lose focus from the game if it's simply removed before it gets to do something interesting. To that end, most of my lists are constructed in such a way to heavily punish "alpha strike" style lists, and to have options when my opponent seeks to limit mine with super aggressive strategies. Having wasted points in a normal game is worth it to me if, when facing against my most hated opponent the full drop pod spam list, I can kill half their silly walking tin can men before they pop out of their Ultrasmurf Express Delivery Boxes.

Still, I find I often make stupid mistakes more often if my opponent for instance seizes initiative and blows up two expensive vehicles before they get to move.

In 5th ed, I feared the hidden power fist/claw too much. That, and I often tried to minimize casualties when I shouldn't have bothered.

In 6th/7th, I have no idea because I feel like more of a spectator. I roll dice, but then nothing happens. All the action is coming from the other player's list.

I also tend to become demoralized by early losses. I struggle enough to paint as is, and seeing that Leman Russ I spent hours painting get wrecked by grav fire is just like a kick in the teeth. I deal with it by ensuring that for every unit of mine that is killed, that my opponent loses 2 units. I also struggle a lot with proper deployment. I get to play so infrequently and I play against such a wide variety of opponents that I never quite know how to deploy, especially against Drop Pod lists

Use regular IG squads with no equipment at all as your bubblewrap. Physically block landing sites and force drop pod lists to come down in suboptimal places and kill zones. Also, accept that Leman Russes are now garbage because of 7th ed rules.

In maelstrom games, I play way too offensively, always going for the kill rather than trying to grab objectives. This has caused me a few losses on points when I really should have won based on what was left on the table.

I played against an opponent with chaos renegades eith necron allies. He runs three squads of 6 wraiths and lots of rapier batters and earth shakers.... I'll beat him one day!

Martel732 wrote:
.

In 6th/7th, I have no idea because I feel like more of a spectator. I roll dice, but then nothing happens. All the action is coming from the other player's list.

Truth

 War Kitten wrote:
I also tend to become demoralized by early losses. I struggle enough to paint as is, and seeing that Leman Russ I spent hours painting get wrecked by grav fire is just like a kick in the teeth. I deal with it by ensuring that for every unit of mine that is killed, that my opponent loses 2 units. I also struggle a lot with proper deployment. I get to play so infrequently and I play against such a wide variety of opponents that I never quite know how to deploy, especially against Drop Pod lists

I have shifted my strategy in favor of having a blob squad with conscripts deployed in front of it in the bulk of my IG list. Inquisitor Coteaz gives the blob teeth. Half my deployment can be covered by physical bodies preventing a successful drop, the other half by Coteaz' I Was Expecting You and the risk of board edge scatter.

Additionally, to be extra mean, or if you lack sufficient bodies to protect, remember you can construct pod traps. Any models that can't disembark from a drop pod are instantly removed, and if a pod scatters it goes in the "closest allowable area where it can land"-no regard for the passengers.

Use your vehicles and soldiers to create a ring large enough for a pod to deploy, but without enough space for its occupants to disembark. If the pod scatters such that that trap is the closest empty space your opponent immediately loses the occupying squad.

Use that tactic with caution though-in a tournament setting it's powerful and pretty well known
, in a casual setting it's likely to cause a lot of very butthurt anger and a rules argument.

Drop pods traps almost got me into a fist fight. Totally worth it, though. Especially because it was SW.

I always go first. I should learn to stay calm and fire a few turns before assaulting...

 Matthew wrote:
I always go first. I should learn to stay calm and fire a few turns before assaulting...

Which list? For many, that's suicidal. You can't out outshoot the Eldar or Tau.

 Green is Best! wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
.

In 6th/7th, I have no idea because I feel like more of a spectator. I roll dice, but then nothing happens. All the action is coming from the other player's list.

Truth

This is not a thread for complaining about 6th/7th. If you believe this edition is devoid of tactics, there is no point of entering into a tactical discussion. I appreciate that it is a prevailing opinion that the game this forum centers on is terrible and nobody should want to play and enjoy it. There are a number of threads centering around that opinion, I'm not sure where you got the impression that that is the purpose of this one.

Please don't think I'm attacking you for your opinion. Just that "the game sucks!" Doesn't really apply as an answer to "what do you find to be your tactical weakness?"

Answering discussion threads with non sequiturs and celebrating them with imaginary points is part of the grand tradition of the internet, but I would really appreciate if you would not.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Matthew wrote:
I always go first. I should learn to stay calm and fire a few turns before assaulting...

Depends on your list, though. I'm curious how you always go first though. Just how the dice tend to go? My games seem to have seized initiative (against or by me) waaaay more than 1/6 of the time.

I usually play Grey Hunters in Drop Pods with Thunderwolves and Lone Wolves.

 Matthew wrote:
I usually play Grey Hunters in Drop Pods with Thunderwolves and Lone Wolves.

There's no point in holding back. You should be able to run over just about everything in the game. Literally.

Yeah, but I play against a guy who SPAMS Devastators and Plasma.

 Matthew wrote:
Yeah, but I play against a guy who SPAMS Devastators and Plasma.

The sooner you get there, the sooner they die. Devastators and plasma is very 5th ed anyway, you should have no problems at all running him over. I'd kill to go against devastators and plasma with BA.

Using the wrong whatever in an attempt to earn more than a models points back. For example, using the Vindicare's Turbo-Penetrator round to try and knock out their Warlord in one shot (and having every wound in six turns saved) instead of Shield-Breaker rounds (which would guaranteed take the model out in three turns).

 Carlson793 wrote:
Using the wrong whatever in an attempt to earn more than a models points back. For example, using the Vindicare's Turbo-Penetrator round to try and knock out their Warlord in one shot (and having every wound in six turns saved) instead of Shield-Breaker rounds (which would guaranteed take the model out in three turns).

Ah, the ol' shoot for the moon play. Most of the reason my ork lists still include Battlewagons-you can always count on an opponent thinking it'd be sweet if they managed a lucky explodes on that AV14 face with their Lascannons rather than the near sure-thing attack against a Trukk or looted wagon.

The real thing to do is consider which move would really impede your opponent. If for instance you have a nice anti tank weapon, and your opponent has an expensive vehicle deployed behind a cheap transport, yes, the transport is only worth a few points, but if you take it out rather than going for the long odds, you've effectively removed it and its occupants from the game (as they now must walk) and impeded the more expensive vehicle as now it needs to work around his now footslogging infantry unit if it wants to advance.

Not seeing my own models and forgetting they are there. It happens way too often to me because of how much I tunnel-vision when doing strategy

I'm definately too aggressive. I move as fast as possible, flanking and cornering the enemy force through that method, but if something can't be beaten in my alpha stage, I'm suddenly stumped. I also have a love for underused units. Come the five-man outflanking Speshul Unit Kommando unit.

Plus, my friends know how I play now, and I have to try and keep up by trying to be imaginative... Which I barely can.

I tend to play a little too recklessly, going for kills instead of getting the objectives (but I'm getting better at this). I also have problems with target selection. I've wasted entire armies' worth of shooting to try to knock down fliers before...

Another problem I have is good deployment strategy. I'm never sure what the best place to put some units is. Some are no-brainers (like putting lascannon Devs in ruins), but other things...

i show up :(

 ZergSmasher wrote:
I tend to play a little too recklessly, going for kills instead of getting the objectives (but I'm getting better at this). I also have problems with target selection. I've wasted entire armies' worth of shooting to try to knock down fliers before...

Another problem I have is good deployment strategy. I'm never sure what the best place to put some units is. Some are no-brainers (like putting lascannon Devs in ruins), but other things...

I know that playing fragile armies like Harlequins has really forced me to think more about deployment, how to use terrain to my advantage for more than just a cover save, and to think more about where I'd like to be positioned turn two rather than just what I'd like to shoot turn one.

my lists generally have maybe one or two units that actually do anything, and the rest of my army is basically useless
example of effectively useless units, 5 man tac squad with a missile launcher/plasma cannon sitting back. i keep using it for some reason but it never does anything.
Or a 5 man tac squad in a rhino with a melta, which never actually pops a tank or kills anything important. Instead it just gets assaulted and dies

As for tactical stuff, every time i face Tau I can never figure out what to do and get shot apart and die

My biggest problem is that I have trouble determining the threat ranges of enemy units on the assault. More than once I have unintentionally put my models in a position where enemy units can easily assault them.

In most cases, the best thing that can happen is for me to lose combat, fail leadership, and successfully break away due to high Initiative.

Playing against Khorne Daemonkin regularly has helped significantly, but I still find myself making mistakes with my movement that let my models get caught out of position and charged. I think the main issue might be that I'm being too aggressive with my models in the movement phase when close to the enemy.

In terms of list-building, I think I often spend too much on characters. Similarly, I'll often buy inferior wargear or such because it fits my character's fluff better.

Also, I rarely use the same list twice, which I suspect to be a mistake.

In terms of tactics on the field:

- With my DE, I think I struggle to find the right balance with my characters and melee units. My characters are fragile, so I'm kinda wary about throwing them forward early on, but on the other hand I can rarely afford for them and their squad to be sitting on the sidelines for most of the game. If I win, fine. if I lose, I usually overcompensate. e.g. If I was too aggressive with my Archon and lost him early, next game he'll spend almost the entire match hiding somehwere. Or, if he was bunkered in my last game, I'll be overly aggressive with him and probably lose him.

- I think I suffer from 'wanting to see stuff happen' syndrome. As in, even if it's advantageous for me to do nothing or stay bunkered (for whatever reason), I'm usually disinclined to do so. I'd rather be losing but having stuff happen than winning by doing sod-all. If you see what I mean.

- With my IG, I forget that I'm not playing DE and end up with massive pile-ups as I realise my vehicles can't just hop over one another.

With Space Wolves I spend too much on hq's.
With Eldar I always put the Avatar in the wrong place during deployment so the buff bubble doesn't reach the right units so turns 1 and 2 are spent fixing it.

Forgetting one of the squads inside one of my transports is still inside and has done zip the entire game until the game is over...

I also usually pick the worst places to deepstrike my terminators, just because there is more room over near those thunderwolf cavalry, or by that riptide, or that other big scary thing

My achillies heel is not accepting that I should have given up on this hobby almost a decade ago. I will never go pro. I hate the maelstrom and I dont build lists with enough troops to go score obj. Troops and HQs to me are just a marketing scheme to get people to buy them as minimum requirements. I just do the minimum 1 sorc and 2x10 cultists and thats it as I spend the rest of my points on other slots.
Formations are great at this.

My other achillies heel is playing CSM.