Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Audustum wrote:


Not saying we're Sun Tzu here, but what is common sense to one is tactical mastery to another. They ARE tactics. I'd say a tax tical game should strive to have more and varied of them though.

Part of the problem isn't 40k exclusive. It's just part of game design culture. Currently, developers view premade combos and modifiers as tactics. They are, but they're very obvious ones. Complex tactics, like we see in the real world, are harder to provide for in a game because they're meant to play on perceptions or break norms as a rule.

One good example is commanders who had their soldiers hold two torches apiece at night instead of one. This made the army seem twice as large to the enemy. How could you do this in game mechanics?

What about Zhuge Liang's mythic borrowing of arrows at Chi Bi? He secretly filled the boats with hay and taunted the enemy army. He then collected all the arrows into the hay.

Napoleon crushed a retreating army by having his artillery break the ice under their feet after pushing them onto the water.

Multiple commanders used the empty fort strategy: staying quiet in the woods near a village so the enemy thought they were hiding in the village and deployed their backsides to the woods.

These are examples of tactics, but figuring out a way to allow players this kind of freedom of thought and ability in a game like 40k is a quick way to frustrate your mind.

Like you say these things are pretty impossible on the table top without fog of war, morphable terrain, and absolute freedom of choice.

Which one could argue these fall into 'target priority' and 'deployment'. e.g. the torches affect their target priority. I feel like those trying to lump everything into those two categories (not you) are using it as a crutch to turn their nose up at 40K and pretend like it's a shallow game. I mean, sure, we're not going to get lauded for our profound genius, but the game has choice, depth, and exploitable consequences.

I'm not going to give a list of tactics like others have, but I'm definitely going to disagree with the "no tactics" team.

I've watched games where one team lost by turn 2, we reset the game, deployed differently and approached the game differently and won the game instead.

I've been to tournaments where "OP lists" were on the bottom tables. And I've experienced myself learn how to deal with certain lists in more effective ways to squeeze out wins.

It's not really a "git good" argument. But if you allow yourself to blame the dice, you'll never improve. I play an under powered army and do average with my list, but I've seen similar lists to mine do extremely well in multiple tournaments. When I lose I know it's because I should have done something different, and that's tactics.

edit: and another thing. I don't know if its the average attitude of a 40k player, but these forums definitely focus too much on list building compared to tactics. No one in the Orks thread really talks tactics, even though our list building is virtually solved. But tactics are certainly the reason why some people are doing better than others, it's not luck when its 6 or 8 games in a row (in a tournament), to think those results are thanks to the dice is blinding yourself.

I think we're in a world where playing a melee force is much more tactical than in 7th, and a shooting/psyker based force is much less.

With melee, you have a whole lot more latitude than you did in 7th. Who you declare as a target, where you declare from, where you move your chargers, where you are then positioned for your pile in, who you choose and do not choose to pile in, who you choose to base, how you divide your attacks, which units you choose to activate in what order, how you move in your consolidation and which models you remove as casualties all directly impact the performance of your army.

Compare to 7th ed, where you would charge, and after that declaration EVERYTHING was prescribed except for the choice to challenge/refuse.

Meanwhile, in the world of shooting, vehicle facings, cover/concealment, blast positioning, and not having universal split fire is all gone. In competitive play, the first three mattered...basically not at all, because all those had been removed by sparse competitive board setups, the weakness of vehicles, and Invisibility strats rendering blasts ineffectual. But in casual play, players felt that draining of depth.

But man. When I play my Dark Eldar+Harlequins, all the hollowness of the game drains away. Every decision is critical, and every mistake has an impact. I absolutely cannot wait until they get their codexes.

I'm honestly not certain what "tactics" you're looking for.

I play a variety of tactical wargames, and it's not really any different, just that there's expensive models instead of cardboard counters on hexboards.

List building actually adds some strategy to it that scenario-based tactical games don't have.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

the_scotsman wrote:
I think we're in a world where playing a melee force is much more tactical than in 7th, and a shooting/psyker based force is much less.

With melee, you have a whole lot more latitude than you did in 7th. Who you declare as a target, where you declare from, where you move your chargers, where you are then positioned for your pile in, who you choose and do not choose to pile in, who you choose to base, how you divide your attacks, which units you choose to activate in what order, how you move in your consolidation and which models you remove as casualties all directly impact the performance of your army.

Compare to 7th ed, where you would charge, and after that declaration EVERYTHING was prescribed except for the choice to challenge/refuse.

Meanwhile, in the world of shooting, vehicle facings, cover/concealment, blast positioning, and not having universal split fire is all gone. In competitive play, the first three mattered...basically not at all, because all those had been removed by sparse competitive board setups, the weakness of vehicles, and Invisibility strats rendering blasts ineffectual. But in casual play, players felt that draining of depth.

But man. When I play my Dark Eldar+Harlequins, all the hollowness of the game drains away. Every decision is critical, and every mistake has an impact. I absolutely cannot wait until they get their codexes.

I wouldn''t really say that. I definitely feel the dramatic improvement in close combat, but I don't really feel a reduction from shooting. The nitty-gritty of exactly 2" spacing to avoid my manticore barrage, or the exact angle my tank was facing, basically were irrelevant to all things. When in doubt, just pivot the tank and point it right at the target, all guns can shoot forward.

I couldn't really care less about all that stuff about CQC you mentioned though. What matters to me is the ability to remove yourself from combat voluntarily, and the ability of CQC to shut down shooting. This makes is a very powerful tactical tool on the field that can considerably augment the power of a force. The rest of the stuff basically doesn't matter. For all the talk about activation order in CQC, its probably adds the least to the game of all the CQC changes.

Tactics play a role, but thats also heavily embedded within list building. You build your list around a tactic and deploy around it, so that when your army hits the table it's pretty much just hitting the "go" button.

40k is not, and never has been, a deep tactical game. The actual combat is extremely attritional, the objectives typically are just a point on the board you control by proximity, not much to it.

List building and deployment is 95% of the game.

"Tactics" within a game like 40k to me means being able to make choices that will give me a better chance of winning.

I think that the game does have tactics in this sense. I make choices to move, to shoot, to charge, and where and when to do that. There will be optimal choices and knowing which ones to take are "tactics".

Would playing armies with more nuance than just my super killy character smashes you in the face, make these choices less obvious and therefore more dependent on player skill to win? Probably, yes.

It's interesting to think about whether Chess is a tactical game? All the moves are known beforehand and some units are more powerful than others. Most people would say winning comes down to being able to make more "best" choices in your decisions than your opponent. Which is not dissimilar to 40k.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Tactics play a role, but thats also heavily embedded within list building. You build your list around a tactic and deploy around it, so that when your army hits the table it's pretty much just hitting the "go" button.

40k is not, and never has been, a deep tactical game. The actual combat is extremely attritional, the objectives typically are just a point on the board you control by proximity, not much to it.

List building and deployment is 95% of the game.

Two identical lists face each other. There are no major dice swings. Which one wins?

Tactics or Strategies?

Plenty of strategies starting from list building, to objective placements, choice of going first or second (lol) making the decision to go for objectives over going full ham to table.

Tactics according to google would be how you end up moving things around and using what you already brought.

target priority being one, order in which you shoot and do things which can come up for things like charging or positioning to take an objective.

what kinda tactics are you expecting?

 MinscS2 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

These all fall under deployment and target priority. Getting the most out of your units - like charging with a rhino that has nothing else to do. I'm not sure that's tactics...That is just common sense.

Tomato, tomato. Looks like tactics to me.
Not sure why you're trying to make it sound like "common sense" and "tactics" are mutually exclusive.

technically everything you do on a battlefield is a "tactic". I guess I was thinking to deeply into it. You are right.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Tactics play a role, but thats also heavily embedded within list building. You build your list around a tactic and deploy around it, so that when your army hits the table it's pretty much just hitting the "go" button.

40k is not, and never has been, a deep tactical game. The actual combat is extremely attritional, the objectives typically are just a point on the board you control by proximity, not much to it.

List building and deployment is 95% of the game.

Yet in a mirror match with mirrored deployment there is clearly an element of understanding the importance of in game movement, movement denial and screening, and a variety of other factors. I'm not arguing the game is incredibly complex but the idea that its 95% deployment list building is too far, those are major elements but not to that degree.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 MinscS2 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

These all fall under deployment and target priority. Getting the most out of your units - like charging with a rhino that has nothing else to do. I'm not sure that's tactics...That is just common sense.

Tomato, tomato. Looks like tactics to me.
Not sure why you're trying to make it sound like "common sense" and "tactics" are mutually exclusive.

technically everything you do on a battlefield is a "tactic". I guess I was thinking to deeply into it. You are right.

Using a rhino to eat over watch would be a tactic. common sense or not. fish o fury was a tactic.

sultansean wrote:
...It's interesting to think about whether Chess is a tactical game? All the moves are known beforehand and some units are more powerful than others. Most people would say winning comes down to being able to make more "best" choices in your decisions than your opponent. Which is not dissimilar to 40k.

The difference, to me, and the thing that makes people belittle the tactical aspect of 40k, is that when you "do something" in chess you set it up over a number of turns and your opponent has the ability to interact with/disrupt a game state you're trying to achieve as you build it. In 40k I've got a constant, straightforward goal each turn (remove threatening enemy models, position to be on objectives) and my decisions are made in order to further those goals efficiently, whereas in a game of chess I need to consider each move in the context of the game stat I'm trying to achieve, what my opponent might do in response, and how the game state is going to be affected by said decision a few moves down the line.

In practice there are fewer decisions to make in 40k, the quality of a decision is easier to evaluate quickly, and the difference between a "bad" decision and a "good" decision is less significant, which is why people point at 40k as a less "tactical" game than others; the problem, however, is that trying to make a game more tactical not only makes it harder to learn but it makes playing it as a newbie a lot more frustrating. Consider for the moment Warmachine (where a common adage from experienced players is "you will lose to everything the first time you see it"); in 40k a fairly new player can work out what something does and how to deal with it by reading the datasheets, whereas in Warmachine the interaction between abilities is complex enough and board positioning difficult enough that sticking something disruptive like an ability you aren't familiar with into a game can trip you up and make a game very one-sided.

So yes, Warhammer is less tactical than a lot of games, but it's also a lot more forgiving and a lot more n00b-friendly than more complicated games because you don't spend six months getting stomped by things you weren't prepared for before you can get your feet under you.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Yarium wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Yarium wrote:
...I'm tempted to do a very careful recording of a game, making notes on every group of dice rolled, tracking the value of every dice rolled, and tracking expected values for dice roll results. In this way, I could determine if one player or another was truly lucky, and if so, in which way.

The problem with this methodology is that some die rolls matter more than others; there aren't very many single rolls on which the whole game rest anymore (unless you're, say, trying to play something like a ten-man Custodian Warden squad at 1,000pts, at that point the charge roll is very much a win/loss thing), but it should be fairly obvious that a hit roll with a lascannon is more important than one with a lasgun, or that a save against a lascannon is more important than a save against a lasgun.

For funnies then, how would you wish to change that methodology? My current thought was in how I would break down the different "luck" results, like "whom was luckiest with damage rolls" or "whom was luckiest with Advancing rolls", etc.

I might break it down based on an attack as a whole rather than individual die rolls, see how your damage compares to the average for that attack. A given lucky hit roll is rendered irrelevant by an unlucky wound roll, take the attack as a whole and you don't end up tracking pseudo-relevant data (learning that your hit rolls are 20% better than they should be is misleading if you also learn that your wound rolls are 20% worse than they should be, for instance).

Strategy is list building, knowing the meta, choosing units with complimentary rules, picking a preferred path to victory, and including counters to other strategies.

Tactics is Target prioritization, maneuver, managing objectives, and executing/changing strategy.

When one has issues, both suffer. Like in 7th ed when there were apex predator lists that were just unbeatable by the vast majority of lists, tactics suffered because the best you could manage was loosing by less. An example of it working the other way would be if shooting were better than CC, so the requirement for viable tactics constrains strategy.

In real life strategy is tactics superior in every way, Tactics is what you use when strategy hasn't already assured you victory. In a game though, you want a good balance between the two, and right now I feel like strategy is much more complicated and possibly much more rewarding than tactics.

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Tactics play a role, but thats also heavily embedded within list building. You build your list around a tactic and deploy around it, so that when your army hits the table it's pretty much just hitting the "go" button.

40k is not, and never has been, a deep tactical game. The actual combat is extremely attritional, the objectives typically are just a point on the board you control by proximity, not much to it.

List building and deployment is 95% of the game.

Yet in a mirror match with mirrored deployment there is clearly an element of understanding the importance of in game movement, movement denial and screening, and a variety of other factors. I'm not arguing the game is incredibly complex but the idea that its 95% deployment list building is too far, those are major elements but not to that degree.

when you hold all equal, then only that 5% matters

That said, a lot of those factors are also part of list building and deployment. For example, if your army has no screening units, if you deploy your units incorrectly (say putting your screen behind your big guns), or dont have support elements for the screeners, then your tactics arent going to work.

The game isn't devoid of tactics but in general its lacking in terms of player agency. There are wrong choices to be made, but for the most part its a game of focusing fire on threatening pieces to reduce the return fire to the point where taking sub-optimal attacks to ensure destruction is more valuable than spreading more damage around by attacking optimal targets. None of this is exactly rocket science though.

I'm generally of the opinion that a game with a winner and loser is competitive by definition, but playing a bit, I do understand the "forging the narrative" kind of mentality. The lack of agency can make it easy to not care who wins and just put down models to see how the game resolves itself.

The primary issue the game has is that positioning doesn't matter a whole lot after deployment. Most models have relatively low mobility compared to threat range (I consider this true even while assaulting as a charging unit attacks more like a gun by moving farther there then they did in the movement phase). The lack of movement is really only noticeable laterally, where its pretty common for the game to get where its a 3 turn hike to get to an objective. This really limits how the game can interact with objectives.

40K has never really had tactics at least not in the way most people think. The vast majority of the game is in list building and finding combos, which is what people think is the Pinnacle of skill in the game.

There are some minor tactical applications such as Target priority and knowing where to apply the use of force but for the most part I find Warhammer of any flavor to be pretty low on the actual tactics that can be applied during the game

 AnomanderRake wrote:
[quote=sultansean 751974 9859706 nullSo yes, Warhammer is less tactical than a lot of games, but it's also a lot more forgiving and a lot more n00b-friendly than more complicated games because you don't spend six months getting stomped by things you weren't prepared for before you can get your feet under you.

But do you think that tactics necessarily requires complexity? 40k is a more complex game than Chess. Way more rules, pieces and potential interactions, but it is a more tactical game? I don't know, I think it depends on how you define tactics.

For example my preferred game Kings of War, is not as complex as 40k but I would say it is more tactical. There are less units and less rules, but within games there are many more times where my opponent's pre-planning and positioning of units has me pulling my hair out because he has left me no "good" or obvious options.

Based on this I don't think that a tactical game needs to be complex but it does need to put restrictions on players choices so that one can plan for an opponents actions. In 40k because units are very free to move and shoot this is hard to do. I would think that having terrain that prevents movement, would be a short terms solution. Less units on the table with longer range and more line of sigh blocking terrain would also do it. Letting close combat units move up under cover and having shooting movements move to gain good fire lanes are all things that are "tactics" in my opinion which could be represented in the game.

Wayniac wrote:
40K has never really had tactics at least not in the way most people think. The vast majority of the game is in list building and finding combos, which is what people think is the Pinnacle of skill in the game.

There are some minor tactical applications such as Target priority and knowing where to apply the use of force but for the most part I find Warhammer of any flavor to be pretty low on the actual tactics that can be applied during the game

Its kinda hard to call target priority minor.

its a core concept in most if not all games.

if anything there is a hand full of universal Core tactics, some less important than others depending on the system. but i can see how some gamers ignore that for more of the super flashy combo type tricks and put more value into it that they should.

 MinscS2 wrote:
The main "tactic" in 40k atm seems to be target priority.
Movement/positioning is important as well, for most armies.

I'd say it's unfair to both the game and the players to claim that there's no tactics involved in 40k.

Positioning and movement is made less important due to plethora of LOS ignoring, board wide range weapons certain armies can spam.

 skchsan wrote:

 MinscS2 wrote:
The main "tactic" in 40k atm seems to be target priority.
Movement/positioning is important as well, for most armies.

I'd say it's unfair to both the game and the players to claim that there's no tactics involved in 40k.

Positioning and movement is made less important due to plethora of LOS ignoring, board wide range weapons certain armies can spam.

You mean the one major army?

but yeah 40k... unfortunately has less emphases on movement and positioning than say AOS. its a heavy shooting game that doesn't use its terrain well.

 skchsan wrote:

 MinscS2 wrote:
The main "tactic" in 40k atm seems to be target priority.
Movement/positioning is important as well, for most armies.

I'd say it's unfair to both the game and the players to claim that there's no tactics involved in 40k.

Positioning and movement is made less important due to plethora of LOS ignoring, board wide range weapons certain armies can spam.

Outside of Imperial Guard and Eldar Reapers there are significant tactics in this game.

I'll give an example of where i used some tactics to win big on the final table of a tournament. I intentionally deployed my hive guard forward, as far as they'd go behind 1 thin line of Hormagaunts, with the intent of pulling the majority of my opponent's forces into the center of the map. He went after my Hive Guard hard, and this allowed me to get 12 points of secondaries in 2 turns at the cost of the Hive Guard, because i set myself up to counterattack the sides of his approach (pincer). Additionally, I chose to go second so he could control more of the board and really deny my deep strike. But when i hollowed out my lines, everything arrived in the center of my army and attacked out as my forward forces retreated. He couldn't fall back with a critical chunk of his force and I won easily, as I just kited him for the remainder of the time denying points, having scored well enough to win.

Meanwhile nothing like this works against or with guard. "I put down my screens and rolled my artillery dice. I knew the <insert here> was capable of wounding T7 so i shot it first. Call me Sun Tzu 2."

As one poster mentioned, armies that are focused on melee AND shooting are the most complex and interesting.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Things I've done lately:

- Charge with a rhino to delay/silence a unit
- Swap a spell out to adjust to developing opportunities
- Sacrificed a character to spawndom to teleport him into a unit
- Shoot out a unit closest to my helbrute so that Fire Frenzy can double tap a more desirable target
- Reposition psykers to use CF on an incoming termie sorc
- Deployed Tzaangors as if they were a screen and then DMC'd them when all the support was in position
- Deployed a predator in an odd position to try and give a sense of security and then push it out 12" along with Blasphemous to get it hitting full strength

I've done similar stuff (minus the Tzeentch).

in every game I've played of 8th, my opponent has been surprised at something (tactics wise) I've done.

the_scotsman wrote:
I think we're in a world where playing a melee force is much more tactical than in 7th, and a shooting/psyker based force is much less.

With melee, you have a whole lot more latitude than you did in 7th. Who you declare as a target, where you declare from, where you move your chargers, where you are then positioned for your pile in, who you choose and do not choose to pile in, who you choose to base, how you divide your attacks, which units you choose to activate in what order, how you move in your consolidation and which models you remove as casualties all directly impact the performance of your army.

Compare to 7th ed, where you would charge, and after that declaration EVERYTHING was prescribed except for the choice to challenge/refuse.

Meanwhile, in the world of shooting, vehicle facings, cover/concealment, blast positioning, and not having universal split fire is all gone. In competitive play, the first three mattered...basically not at all, because all those had been removed by sparse competitive board setups, the weakness of vehicles, and Invisibility strats rendering blasts ineffectual. But in casual play, players felt that draining of depth.

But man. When I play my Dark Eldar+Harlequins, all the hollowness of the game drains away. Every decision is critical, and every mistake has an impact. I absolutely cannot wait until they get their codexes.

ITC Invisibility still allowed Blasts, and you could "bring your own cover" by setting up formations. Rhino-Training was a common trick in 5th and while less present could still be done in 7th versus non-Tau opponents. Sure, your opponent could plop Hunters Eye on a Bike Command Squad toting Grav...but just how many points are we talking?

As for Assault, yes the actual fight was primarily resolution, but when it comes to fiddling with "do I pile in," that's definitely getting into minutiae IMO. There is an old Dashofpepper thread from 5th (his oldcron assault tactica) which talks about using the Deceiver to "force-kite" his opponent away from objectives. 40k as a whole sadly lacks positional shenanigans in that aspect; GW overreacted to Lash being semi-popular and nerfed Tank Shock, removed Mawloc pushing, and made Magna-Grapnels just make you run into melee instead of doing Scorpion's "GET OVER HERE!" And that's just boring.

Part of the problem with positional shenanigans is that the game is very abstracted, which means most of the time any positional tricks are more an exploitation than an intentional tactic. There's a sense than whenever positioning matters; its an exploit in the way the rule is worded and not something that's really intended to work that way.

Meanwhile nothing like this works against or with guard. "I put down my screens and rolled my artillery dice. I knew the <insert here> was capable of wounding T7 so i shot it first. Call me Sun Tzu 2."

This exactly.

Its not complexity of mechanics that it needs it need complexity of choice.

There are obvious better or worse choices you can make. You're either optimal or you're not for whatever it is you are doing in 40k. Sometimes what is or is not better is less obvious to the player but the impact is absolute.

For 40k to have meaningful tactics it needs more nuanced meaningful choice.

Well ITC would be a case of house ruling not everyone really did it though it makes sense. there is something shimmering over there but i cant see, lets take some pot shots at them. but lets not use our flamers or large blast weapons for some raisin.

but yeah there is a lack of movement shenanigans. sort of. there is a lot more offensive shenanigans to be had with melee, pile ins and disengages.
i can see the changes though seem to be so you as a player cannot move your opponents stuff. maybe some of those warhammer world guys got sick of cheeto fingers fiddling fine figures.

 LunarSol wrote:
Part of the problem with positional shenanigans is that the game is very abstracted, which means most of the time any positional tricks are more an exploitation than an intentional tactic. There's a sense than whenever positioning matters; its an exploit in the way the rule is worded and not something that's really intended to work that way.

Except 40k itself really isn't abstracted in a consistent manner. An abstract 40k game would have "Small Arms," "Bolt Weapons," etc. rather than Bolters vs Bolt Rifles vs Bolt Carbines, wouldn't have lots of minute rules for special kung-fu wardances, etc.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Desubot wrote:
Well ITC would be a case of house ruling not everyone really did it though it makes sense. there is something shimmering over there but i cant see, lets take some pot shots at them. but lets not use our flamers or large blast weapons for some raisin.

but yeah there is a lack of movement shenanigans. sort of.
i can see the changes though seem to be so you as a player cannot move your opponents stuff. maybe some of those warhammer world guys got sick of cheeto fingers fiddling fine figures.

Lash was the only ability that had your opponent physically move your stuff. Tank Shock, Mawlocs and Magna-Grapnels had explicit displacement instructions. Likewise, Death is Not Enough was almost like a cleaner Lash, since you used it to nominate a board edge for your opponent to flee towards; even disregarding Fearless and other means shutting the aforementioned ability down, such abilities let you manipulate your opponent's position without risk of Cheetosplosion.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Lance845 wrote:
Its not complexity of mechanics that it needs it need complexity of choice.

There are obvious better or worse choices you can make. You're either optimal or you're not for whatever it is you are doing in 40k. Sometimes what is or is not better is less obvious to the player but the impact is absolute.

For 40k to have meaningful tactics it needs more nuanced meaningful choice.

And we have a winner.

There was lash and the whole deep strike mishaps and i think there was a few others but honestly im trying to put 7th waaaaay behind me.

(obviously this is not actually an issue outside of a few cases of actual cheeto people)

also id be down for more choices outside of just list building.

40k is the least tactical war game I've ever played.

It has always been shallow with clear and obvious right and wrong courses of action.