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Farseer_V2 wrote:

 Fafnir wrote:
Making some very obvious tactical reactions is not counterplay, not deep or proactive gameplay. There are very few occasions where you'll be making moves in 8th (and honestly, most earlier editions, but we're in 8th now) that require a good level of skill or intuition. It's all very spelled out. Since everything is so direct, while you might end up reacting to certain situations, you don't end up spending much time actually trying to outplay your opponent, as that level of interaction is mostly unimportant.

40k has a very low skill ceiling, essentially. And that's not a good thing.

If that's the case then why do the same players consistently place well in events? If the skill ceiling is that low you'd think there'd be a lot more variance in the top tables based at some point on dice, luck, etc.

A lot of that comes down to rules/reading comprehension and the fact that a lot of people are just really bad at the game (not an indictment, a lot of people find joy in the hobby through things that aren't linked to winning games, miniature gaming is a diverse hobby). It doesn't help that 40k has a really large and really strange competitively-anti-competitive crowd that seems to consider unbalanced and unfair play options to be a virtue of game design.

Danny slag wrote:
If you think 40k has strong synergies you need to try literally any other game.

People not experienced in other games seem to be confusing having a model that gives everything rerolls with a variety of synergies and interactions. If each army has a buff unit that all do the same thing that should not synergy, that's not options and variety. It's like if MtG had one single combo for each color deck and you said, "see it has synergies."

Hell, you don't even need to go beyond GW. AoS does a much better job of this. Different command abilities can end up changing the entire playstyles of some armies.

Danny slag wrote:

If you think 40k has strong synergies you need to try literally any other game.

People not experienced in other games seem to be confusing having a model that gives everything rerolls with a variety of synergies and interactions. If each army has a buff unit that all do the same thing that should not synergy, that's not options and variety. It's like if MtG had one single combo for each color deck and you said, "see it has synergies."

Ahh so we've decided to attack a perceived lack of experience! I actively play Dropzone Commander (and Dropfleet), Malifaux, 40k, AoS, and Frost Grave. I have played in the past WHFB, Warmahordes, Bolt Action, Kings of War, plus a huge myraid of specialist games like Blood Bowl, BFG, Epic, LoTR, and WoTR. Different games do different things. I personally think WoTR is the best game GW ever produced and if it was still active I'd play the hell out of it. However it isn't. People seem to confuse their opinions on 40k (no depth, no skill, all alpha strike, CCG, etc) with facts. 40k is a fine game with plenty of options, plenty of chances for me to interact with it and meaningfully improve my chances of winning. It has interesting interactions both at the list building and game play stages. I could point all those out but we've seen already that those points will be dismissed as 'well yeah but that really just boils down to x" so I see no point in attempting to defend a position that other people have effectively taken a stance on that they're uninterested in changing.

Fortunately 8th edition has been a raging success so far with a rapidly growing tournament community so it looks like I'll be able to keep playing my simpleton's game for quite awhile.

Purifying Tempest wrote:
Buffs and synergies?

7th edition says hello.

Don't acknowledge it or it may come back.

8th is an edition about spacing. Good lord does space matter.

How many lascannons did I just deploy my tank in range of?

How many units are cluttered together that those berserkers are about to pacman through?

Is that Devastator squad in or out of my commander's 6" bubble while he's wandering off to counter-assault some poor sods?

Did I properly wrap my lines? Did my opponent differ his deep strike in hopes that I will scatter more on turn 2? Did I fall for that, again?

Why is my commander standing 2mm in front of the line of guys he is buffing? Ah crap, his screen was murdered and now he's dead.

How many of those bikes can I shoot off of that objective? How many can I shoot off before I shoot myself out of assaulting them and thus lose the objective?

MTG, and practically every other CCG, has always been about net decking. Once people realized they could have other people look at their ideas and critique them, and use that experience and perspective to evolve their decks... they began using it. "Competitive" events for those games usually boiled down to the "deck to beat" and the "deck that beats the deck to beat", and usually a few modifications to personalize the deck or try to get 1% more efficiency out of it.

Comparing playing a turn at Warhammer to a turn in MTG is completely out of line. I mean, I guess you could... if the tabletop in MTG could fight you back in addition to your opponent. "Oh, I'm sorry, your summon creature spell was put down just 2 inches too far away for you to attack my creature. Maybe when you get to your upkeep phase next turn and you can adjust it."

To get the real CCG feeling, you'd have to do things like eliminate the dead-man's land, play on a flat 6'x4' surface, and be able to place all of your stuff in such a way that it is simultaneously in range of all of the prime targets you want.

I think this whole discussion is really starting to showcase why the top players are the top players. They consider a lot of these variables quickly, and internally, and usually you don't catch on until it is too late to reverse your course... or of course, you lose. Some people never catch on. Those are the ones who say that luck simply was not with them, or their opponent just lucked into a really good position/dice rolls/whatever.

What an asinine statement. No one is suggesting playing on a terrainless flat board to replicate the look of a ccg, do you have any concept of game mechanics at all? That's like saying if you use dice then you need a board with spaces to movement on like monopoly. The concept of synergy and comboing multiple layers of unit interactions can work in different formats. That mechanic is what I talked about, don't be obtuse.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
"But shooting armies need to shoot stuff and close combat armies need to get close, look how deep and tactical it is."
If you think that's tactical and deep gameplay I see why you don't understand the issue.

 Fafnir wrote:
A lot of that comes down to rules/reading comprehension and the fact that a lot of people are just really bad at the game (not an indictment, a lot of people find joy in the hobby through things that aren't linked to winning games, miniature gaming is a diverse hobby). It doesn't help that 40k has a really large and really strange competitively-anti-competitive crowd that seems to consider unbalanced and unfair play options to be a virtue of game design.

So then the skill ceiling is higher than initially stated? If the ceiling is low then more than a handful of people should be showing even given that the bottom grouping is bad. If the ceiling is low then you should see a fairly dramatic shift where the top 50-60% of a tournament is effectively equally skilled.

 CREEEEEEEEED wrote:

quentra wrote:
Please offer some concrete examples. Do you mean range modifiers to the to-hit roll for movement? Do you mean to-wound mods for firing on the enemy not straight on?
Everyone keeps talking about this mythical movement that is deeper than 40ks, but no one actually talks about what it is.

Here we see the glorious Nelson defeating the French and Spanish at Trafalgar.
See what he's doing? He's cutting the Coalition's line of ships with his own ships. In 40k, you'd just line up next to them and fire away. But Nelson is cutting the line, through his use of positioning, he's made it so he has a significant advantage, being able to fire up the French line whilst they are unable really to fire back. Sure he could have gone line for line, but the option was there, and he took it, being a brilliant naval commander. In 40k, the option isn't there, due to the core mechanics.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Or how about outflanking on land? One of the simplest manoeuvres in all warfare is basically non-existent is 8th 40k.

Yea do you realize how long it takes to turn a boat around?

Show where anything like this would happen on a field of battle the size of 40K. There isn't a grand strategy map where I can breakthrough the front lines and circle over to the artillery to silence them. The artillery is on the same god damn table.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 CREEEEEEEEED wrote:

quentra wrote:
Please offer some concrete examples. Do you mean range modifiers to the to-hit roll for movement? Do you mean to-wound mods for firing on the enemy not straight on?
Everyone keeps talking about this mythical movement that is deeper than 40ks, but no one actually talks about what it is.

Here we see the glorious Nelson defeating the French and Spanish at Trafalgar.
See what he's doing? He's cutting the Coalition's line of ships with his own ships. In 40k, you'd just line up next to them and fire away. But Nelson is cutting the line, through his use of positioning, he's made it so he has a significant advantage, being able to fire up the French line whilst they are unable really to fire back. Sure he could have gone line for line, but the option was there, and he took it, being a brilliant naval commander. In 40k, the option isn't there, due to the core mechanics.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Or how about outflanking on land? One of the simplest manoeuvres in all warfare is basically non-existent is 8th 40k.

Yea do you realize how long it takes to turn a boat around?

Show where anything like this would happen on a field of battle the size of 40K. There isn't a grand strategy map where I can breakthrough the front lines and circle over to the artillery to silence them. The artillery is on the same god damn table.

This isn't an argument worth having because any attempt you make to demonstrate elements of choice, skill, or interaction will be boiled to the most insultingly simple concept someone can find and then label it as such.

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

 Fafnir wrote:
A lot of that comes down to rules/reading comprehension and the fact that a lot of people are just really bad at the game (not an indictment, a lot of people find joy in the hobby through things that aren't linked to winning games, miniature gaming is a diverse hobby). It doesn't help that 40k has a really large and really strange competitively-anti-competitive crowd that seems to consider unbalanced and unfair play options to be a virtue of game design.

So then the skill ceiling is higher than initially stated? If the ceiling is low then more than a handful of people should be showing even given that the bottom grouping is bad. If the ceiling is low then you should see a fairly dramatic shift where the top 50-60% of a tournament is effectively equally skilled.

High floor, low ceiling. Even with the streamlining that 8th edition brought to the table, there's still a lot of janky and obfuscated rules to keep track of, and internalizing the rules can take a lot of work for some people. 40k lends itself well to to those strong in linear mathematical processing of information and encylopedic memory. But as someone with good faculties in both of those qualities, I wouldn't consider either a good measure of player skill, nor as a cornerstone of deep gameplay.

 Fafnir wrote:

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

 Fafnir wrote:
A lot of that comes down to rules/reading comprehension and the fact that a lot of people are just really bad at the game (not an indictment, a lot of people find joy in the hobby through things that aren't linked to winning games, miniature gaming is a diverse hobby). It doesn't help that 40k has a really large and really strange competitively-anti-competitive crowd that seems to consider unbalanced and unfair play options to be a virtue of game design.

So then the skill ceiling is higher than initially stated? If the ceiling is low then more than a handful of people should be showing even given that the bottom grouping is bad. If the ceiling is low then you should see a fairly dramatic shift where the top 50-60% of a tournament is effectively equally skilled.

High floor, low ceiling. Even with the streamlining that 8th edition brought to the table, there's still a lot of janky and obfuscated rules to keep track of, and internalizing the rules can take a lot of work for some people. 40k lends itself well to to those strong in linear mathematical processing of information and encylopedic memory. But as someone with good faculties in both of those qualities, I wouldn't consider either a good measure of player skill, nor as a cornerstone of deep gameplay.

I'm genuinely curious what markets you consider to a measure of player skill. I would think system mastery and risk management have to factor into player skill.

The most important element of player skill in a (well developed) head-to-head environment is reading your opponent. Getting in their head, figuring out what their decision making process is, and then exploiting and conditioning that process in order to manipulate their decisions for optimal outcomes in your favour.

 Fafnir wrote:
The most important element of player skill in a (well developed) head-to-head environment is reading your opponent. Getting in their head, figuring out what their decision making process is, and then exploiting and conditioning that process in order to manipulate their decisions for optimal outcomes in your favour.

Interesting, don't know that I agree but at least a different view point. I feel like this discounts a variety of other factors that I would consider tremendously important when determining skill in a given environment.

 Fafnir wrote:
The most important element of player skill in a (well developed) head-to-head environment is reading your opponent. Getting in their head, figuring out what their decision making process is, and then exploiting and conditioning that process in order to manipulate their decisions for optimal outcomes in your favour.

Do you think you can't do this in 8th edition 40k?

I've beaten opponents before even deploying because they see my list and it worms into their brain that my list is invincible. I've affected opponent's choices in deployment just by deploying one superheavy tank first, then holding the other two back - usually their antitank overcommits to the one they can see and I can ensure the safety of the other two. In movement, I'll sometimes deliberately expose a unit, trying to bait the enemy into charging it with something powerful so that unit can be cut down after a fall-back move / my unit's annihilation. Other times, I'll steamroll the baneblades forwards and talk up their CC prowess until my opponent is sweating bullets about them getting into CC - even though the Crush Them! stratagem can only be used on one tank in one phase. In shooting, I tend to focus the AT unit my opponent has put most of his hope in, which is not always the same thing as the one that is the most effective, because some opponents overreact to losses and start acting silly (e.g. pulling devastators with lascannons out of LOS of a Baneblade that just nailed a Predator).

There are lots of times I manipulate my opponents into making bad decisions by leveraging the psychological shock that my army can cause. If that's not "getting into their head" I don't know what is.

Danny slag wrote:

What an asinine statement. No one is suggesting playing on a terrainless flat board to replicate the look of a ccg, do you have any concept of game mechanics at all? That's like saying if you use dice then you need a board with spaces to movement on like monopoly. The concept of synergy and comboing multiple layers of unit interactions can work in different formats. That mechanic is what I talked about, don't be obtuse.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
"But shooting armies need to shoot stuff and close combat armies need to get close, look how deep and tactical it is."
If you think that's tactical and deep gameplay I see why you don't understand the issue.

It truly sounds like the complaint is: 40k 8th edition is a bland, depthless sham that isn't as good as X or Y game because it doesn't have immediately apparent c-c-c-combos and c-c-c-combo breakers.

I am being quite obtuse, because the premise being suggested is obtuse. Welcome to the wonderful world of internet hyperbole. If I type in more centrist words meant to truly express that I am not just the other extremist countering your opinion... well, then everything is just discarded because other people do, and they get their points counted or discounted.

Just because the game doesn't present stuff in a glaringly obvious way all of the time stating that "hey, this unit works good... but it works better with that unit, too!" does not mean it is entirely devoid of the concept.

I personally find that many units and forces combine very well and present the same threats in new and creative ways when you just change a model or two. I hate spam, so I cannot speak to the crowd that just throws 7 hive tyrants at the problem, but that in itself is another sort of synergy that is present: saturation. I use a collection of high toughness models to devalue your lighter weapons and deny them optimal targets. My models are arranged together to bring that feel to my list.

I have a sororitas army that brings in some militarum support, I don't have very many staggering buffs... but I do have a Company Commander driving his units up the field and shouting orders at them to make them better. Sounds like units working together. I have a Canoness advancing with her two or three squads of sisters, providing them support and sanctuary with her aura and wargear. All of those sisters are moving up behind my line of Dominions, Immolators, and Hellhounds, lobbing a few extra shells past that front line and into units that may still be lurking around. A few Seraphim bouncing around amidst that chaos to cherry pick hard targets with their inferno pistols. Celestine jumping in to draw attention and make my opponent feel bound to his deployment zone. Then she gets unceremoniously slaughtered and pops up in more of a support/counter-charge position with my second wave. Way in the back there are Retributors shelling opponents from the back, sometimes with a Tank Commander, but usually with another Canoness and an Imagifier, for support, you know.

The whole army works together, with each piece being tasked with a smaller part of the overall victory. I do not expect to be carried to victory buy a few overtuned units. Instead I look forward to a combined arms victory, and more often than not... the results are favorable.

Am I granted perks for choosing these specific units to work with each other? Sort of, kind of, but I mean no more than is being claimed that is out there. I didn't find some magical combo. Does my army synergize together and work well with each other to create a more enriching experience outside of: well, gosh, I guess I just play 30 Reapers or 7 Tyrants or as many squads of Dominions and Celestine that I can.

If you want the c-c-c-combo level of synergy, then refer to my very first statement and check out 7th edition. The combos were there, the synergy that you're looking for is there, and it was a serious issue for a lot of people. So much so that we've already moved past it to 8th edition, which should say something.

Farseer_V2 wrote:

 Fafnir wrote:
The most important element of player skill in a (well developed) head-to-head environment is reading your opponent. Getting in their head, figuring out what their decision making process is, and then exploiting and conditioning that process in order to manipulate their decisions for optimal outcomes in your favour.

Interesting, don't know that I agree but at least a different view point. I feel like this discounts a variety of other factors that I would consider tremendously important when determining skill in a given environment.

The thing about rules knowledge and math-hammer optimization is that they're technical skills that don't really do a whole lot to involve the consideration of the opponent. They're secondary skills that can go to enhance the toolkit available in that primary skill of reading your opponent and playing with them, but they are not a meaningful tool on their own. They're mechanical processes that facilitate player interactions, but not player interactions in themselves.

Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Fafnir wrote:
The most important element of player skill in a (well developed) head-to-head environment is reading your opponent. Getting in their head, figuring out what their decision making process is, and then exploiting and conditioning that process in order to manipulate their decisions for optimal outcomes in your favour.

Do you think you can't do this in 8th edition 40k?

Not to a meaningful extent.

I've beaten opponents before even deploying because they see my list and it worms into their brain that my list is invincible.

That's just listbuilding. Which is fun in itself and has its place, but in a well-designed system (not saying that 40k is, because it's not), competent lists should not be open to that mindset.

I've affected opponent's choices in deployment just by deploying one superheavy tank first, then holding the other two back - usually their antitank overcommits to the one they can see and I can ensure the safety of the other two. In movement, I'll sometimes deliberately expose a unit, trying to bait the enemy into charging it with something powerful so that unit can be cut down after a fall-back move / my unit's annihilation.

And gambits like that certainly can work, but 40k often leaves such maneuvres pointless in the face of brute force.

Other times, I'll steamroll the baneblades forwards and talk up their CC prowess until my opponent is sweating bullets about them getting into CC - even though the Crush Them! stratagem can only be used on one tank in one phase. In shooting, I tend to focus the AT unit my opponent has put most of his hope in, which is not always the same thing as the one that is the most effective, because some opponents overreact to losses and start acting silly (e.g. pulling devastators with lascannons out of LOS of a Baneblade that just nailed a Predator).

Disingenuous. Always assume your opponent is smarter than you, has a better grasp of the rules than you, and will react better than you expect.

There are lots of times I manipulate my opponents into making bad decisions by leveraging the psychological shock that my army can cause. If that's not "getting into their head" I don't know what is.

It's about you and your opponent having tools to counter one another, tools to counter those counters (and even further counters, this cycle can be unending), and then working to anticipate one anothers' counters and act appropriately. 40k doesn't have a lot of that, as it tends to revolve more around linear damage output than utility and win conditions.

The perfect example of an internet forum.
A topic saying "40k has no combo's" and another saying "40k is just about assembling your combo" on the same page.

 Ordana wrote:
The perfect example of an internet forum.
A topic saying "40k has no combo's" and another saying "40k is just about assembling your combo" on the same page.

It is because the whole 'discussion' relies on something that is completely subjective. What I consider synergy may not be what other people consider synergy. It is more of an opinion piece, and there are lots of opposing opinions out there :(

Now, enough reasonability... back to being asinine and obtuse. Or as my wife has now termed it: an acute donkey-cave.

Edit: I LOVE the auto-correct to donkey-cave, dakka, that is pretty funny. Thank you!

 Farseer_V2 wrote:
Honest question, have you ever watched a top table game of 8th?

Yes, and I've played a fair amount too. The only time I've ever found movement has ever really been a choice was on a board pretty much choked with buildings. And one game using the open play cards. 12" range as tau really did make positioning important. Normally with 30" range on the basic gun and the ability to deepstrike into range any short ranged guns? Yeah no positioning is basically irrelevant.

 CREEEEEEEEED wrote:

 Farseer_V2 wrote:
Honest question, have you ever watched a top table game of 8th?

Yes, and I've played a fair amount too. The only time I've ever found movement has ever really been a choice was on a board pretty much choked with buildings. And one game using the open play cards. 12" range as tau really did make positioning important. Normally with 30" range on the basic gun and the ability to deepstrike into range any short ranged guns? Yeah no positioning is basically irrelevant.

What format do you play? Because objectives are where it counts.

The game is usually over long before turn 6 due to tabling, so objectives don't really matter,which is a whole other topic. Maybe if we played more maelstrom, but that doesn't add much positional depth, just running between objectives and selecting specific targets to shoot.

 CREEEEEEEEED wrote:
The game is usually over long before turn 6 due to tabling, so objectives don't really matter,which is a whole other topic. Maybe if we played more maelstrom, but that doesn't add much positional depth, just running between objectives and selecting specific targets to shoot.

Oh my god.

You need to go play in-round scoring like with ITC. Please. It's super simple to learn.

Your whole perspective of the game is a world away from ours.

I can only play at the local GW, since there isn't a gaming club anywhere near me. If you're all playing in game scoring then yes, we may as well be completely different games. I'll give it a go alone if I can find the time.

 CREEEEEEEEED wrote:
I can only play at the local GW, since there isn't a gaming club anywhere near me. If you're all playing in game scoring then yes, we may as well be completely different games. I'll give it a go alone if I can find the time.

I promise it would be worth your time. I bet there's someone with an open mind at the GW store.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
I promise it would be worth your time. I bet there's someone with an open mind at the GW store.

Given it's about to become exam season I can't but I'll try on the other side.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Show where anything like this would happen on a field of battle the size of 40K. There isn't a grand strategy map where I can breakthrough the front lines and circle over to the artillery to silence them. The artillery is on the same god damn table.

As for this, yes, that's my point. 40k's scale is all wrong for positioning to matter.

 CREEEEEEEEED wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
I promise it would be worth your time. I bet there's someone with an open mind at the GW store.

Given it's about to become exam season I can't but I'll try on the other side.

Quit school. There is only Warhammer!

Good luck on the exams!

 CREEEEEEEEED wrote:
The game is usually over long before turn 6 due to tabling, so objectives don't really matter,which is a whole other topic. Maybe if we played more maelstrom, but that doesn't add much positional depth, just running between objectives and selecting specific targets to shoot.

Yeah I mean if you aren't playing in game scoring (like they've introduced in Chapter Approved) then I'm sure you have a different perspective to say me who plays almost nothing but in turn scoring (i.e. what most major tournaments in the US are playing).

Thanks. I should probably get off dakka and revise.

Yeah. Play the Chapter Approved missions. Honestly people say "CA didn't add much for matched play" but those missions are heads and shoulders above the BRB ones.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Yeah. Play the Chapter Approved missions. Honestly people say "CA didn't add much for matched play" but those missions are heads and shoulders above the BRB ones.

Tactical gambit is my favorite

go bold or go home

 Desubot wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Yeah. Play the Chapter Approved missions. Honestly people say "CA didn't add much for matched play" but those missions are heads and shoulders above the BRB ones.

Tactical gambit is my favorite

go bold or go home

Eh. I skip the maelstrom ones. It's much more interesting play to know where the objectives are and how to position to claim or deny them.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Desubot wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Yeah. Play the Chapter Approved missions. Honestly people say "CA didn't add much for matched play" but those missions are heads and shoulders above the BRB ones.

Tactical gambit is my favorite

go bold or go home

Eh. I skip the maelstrom ones. It's much more interesting play to know where the objectives are and how to position to claim or deny them.

True though at times it just makes people castle especially if they get a money deployment.

i do like the objective with random value though that one can be funny.

CapRichard wrote:

We could have gone right or left, I had first turn I decided to move right to force him to move right (Some stuff was in view, I shifted my weight, I baited and he went for it basically), having a left flank open to do later a smash and grab if possibile, that actually happened, even if not like I would have wanted, since you know, casualties happened.

Thank you for elaborating. When I first found this site it was stuff like this I was hoping to learn from the tactics section!

I feel that movement isn't as important as I'd like it to be, due to both the size of armies and the board limiting maneuvering options and to a lot of units being mobile enough to go wherever they need to be in one or two turns (or having the (charge) range to affect their desired target). I'd translated this to "movement hardly matters at all" mentally, which I now see was a mistake. Looks like I've got something to try out on the tabletop!


* and I agree that moving your force's weight around only influences where your guys die if you face a much harder list.