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So, what's the most important thing to everyone?

Someone with a good personality who can have a fun time pushing toy soldiers around for a couple of hours, and doesn't approach every game like it's part of a tournament.

Someone who brings fun to the game in whatever mood or mode you're playing it in.

None of the above: ability to understand the inherent superiority of IG over all other factions. Non-IG players are allowed in 40k, but they must accept their lesser role with grace and humility.

Knowing the rules. Good sportsmanship is a result of being confident in what you have, and not feeling the temptation to argue or cheat.

 techsoldaten wrote:
Knowing the rules. Good sportsmanship is a result of being confident in what you have, and not feeling the temptation to argue or cheat.

QFT. Games slow to a crawl when someone doesn't know their rules. Disagreements and fact checking is the death of fun.

Being a good sportsman and a good person in general to be with in a social setting.

Even a short game can take an hour or more and most are going to be several hours long. You want someone you can get on with during that time frame.



The skill aspect is variable. If you are really good chances are you get more fun playing another experienced player and less so against a less experienced one - of course if you're less good or perhaps just more casual then you'd want like for like again. In general this area depends on you and also what you're after on a particular day from a game.
You can equally have great fun playing a beginners intro game with someone as you can a tournament level game as you can one with a few fluffy house rules and some random stuff just for entertainment.

Though I would say in general that the majority of games are "more" fun when both players know the game system well enough to not need to fact check every detail and rule. Some checking will happen with the majority of games and player.

Obviously winning at all costs to demonstrate your superior tactical acumen makes you not only a good player, but the best.

You should probably let the poll accept multiple answers. I'd say a combination of most of the above all add value. You appear to have left off 'ability to make good tactical decisions on the tabletop' though - you can bring a good list and know the rules and still charge your fire warriors into khorne berserkers (for example).

Basically a tie between knowing your rules and sportsmanship. Games with a good guy are horrid when they take forever and it's just as bad when they're a jerk but know their rules.

Fun, painted, good sport are my minimum requirements for a game.
Without that you're not going to get a game with me.

I'm happy to lend or borrow painted models for a newcomer/recently returned player if they're not up to speed.

I voted for good sportmanship. IMHO a good player is someone that always has nice manners and is able to tone down his list if he's too competitive for the meta. A good player also changes his lists very frequently.

I don't give a flying flip what I'm playing against or how long it takes so long as the other player is an affable person.

Knowing the rules comes second, but I'm much happier with someone who forgets them or needs some reminders but takes it well and makes an effort to improve.

 Peregrine wrote:
None of the above: ability to understand the inherent superiority of IG over all other factions. Non-IG players are allowed in 40k, but they must accept their lesser role with grace and humility.

Also none of the above for me. Being a good player is multifaceted including sportsmanship.

Money. Lots of money. And a serious lack of critical thinking.

Thats the best kind of 40k player (For GW)

* good at understanding discrete mathematics, particularly in the area of probability calculations so that you can list build the most powerful probability coefficient possible.

* good at target priority, which has to do with the above. Target priority involves understanding where your opponents high probability items are and eliminating them before they eliminate yours.

This is why people who copy netlists never seem to do well at the higher levels if they don't understand the probabilities that they are copying.

* knowing the rules backwards and forwards so that you understand how to maximize your probabilities within the confines of the rules as well as knowing when your opponent is doing something wrong (and often letting your opponent hang themselves if they don't know the rules as well and are handicapping themselves based on actions stemming from not understanding fully the rules)

That is to me how you git gud at 40k and become a "good player" in the sense that you will do well at tournaments and become an internet celebrity based on your 40k status.

For me personally a good 40k player is one that knows when to bring the A+ list and when to tone it down for casual campaign play, and who doesn't feel the need to club baby seals with their tournament list in an environment that is not a tournament. Also one that takes pride in their models and has them painted and doesn't just buy new lists to chase the meta.

A good player can read the game, one or two turns ahead.
Knowing the enemy is another key point.

I intentionally limited the choices because otherwise I felt everyone would go, 'None of these are bad things, tick them all!'

My main interest is in noting what makes a good 40k player, and then wondering how competative events can attempt to test that.

Definitely sportsmanship first, but appreciate everything else too. Being a good ambassador of the tabletop community is so important to me as I know several who received very poor welcomes into the games/hobby.

AdmiralHalsey wrote:
I intentionally limited the choices because otherwise I felt everyone would go, 'None of these are bad things, tick them all!'

My main interest is in noting what makes a good 40k player, and then wondering how competative events can attempt to test that.

You should probably have led with pointing out that your interest is in competition. As-is you're getting a lot of answers from people who are interpreting your question entirely differently. It's especially problematic that you've put "good" in quotes since it strongly implies (to me, at least) that you're wanting to get at something like "who is playing 40k right?" as opposed to "what should 40k competitions be testing?" Many of your choices are bizarre for this purpose too, and probably contribute to people misunderstanding.

Dionysodorus wrote:

AdmiralHalsey wrote:
I intentionally limited the choices because otherwise I felt everyone would go, 'None of these are bad things, tick them all!'

My main interest is in noting what makes a good 40k player, and then wondering how competative events can attempt to test that.

You should probably have led with pointing out that your interest is in competition. As-is you're getting a lot of answers from people who are interpreting your question entirely differently. It's especially problematic that you've put "good" in quotes since it strongly implies (to me, at least) that you're wanting to get at something like "who is playing 40k right?" as opposed to "what should 40k competitions be testing?" Many of your choices are bizarre for this purpose too, and probably contribute to people misunderstanding.

Leaving it up to the people to define what it means was important too. It's particularly telling most people feel something other than winning games is what makes someone "Good" at the hobby. 40k is as much about painting, and storytelling as it is about playing. Why not hold more events that feature the thing that draws us to the hobby more?

Everyone agrees 40k as a game is pretty trash with consistantly badly written rules, and competatively it's a junkheap. If we feel what makes someone good at the game is not how they win, but how they play, maybe there should be competative events where the focus isn't on who wins the game, but a combination of the narrative aspects of the hobby.

Perhaps "Winning" is who tells the best story, not who scores the most VP. [With a scoring system that often isn't even the same as the one published by GW, anyway.]

As the options are exclusive, had to vote on sportsmanship. Having fun is the main point of any game, after all.
But knowing the rules is right up there too. At least the base rulebook and your own codex/index.

 Peregrine wrote:
None of the above: ability to understand the inherent superiority of IG over all other factions. Non-IG players are allowed in 40k, but they must accept their lesser role with grace and humility.

Kek

The ability to discern at a glance the statistical outcomes of taking certain actions (eg. the projected outcome of this combat group engaging that HVT vs a flanking sweeper unit)

Metaknowledge and at least a cursory understanding of the synergistic combinations in each match-up.

Ability to discern the strengths and weaknesses of an opponent's positioning and take advantage of mistakes to temporarily divide the opponent into manageable chunks.

Most importantly, the ability to roll lots of 6s at the most critical juncture.

Voted sportsmanship. Win or lose, the game should be fun or we have totally lost the plot.

AdmiralHalsey wrote:

Leaving it up to the people to define what it means was important too. It's particularly telling most people feel something other than winning games is what makes someone "Good" at the hobby. 40k is as much about painting, and storytelling as it is about playing. Why not hold more events that feature the thing that draws us to the hobby more?

Everyone agrees 40k as a game is pretty trash with consistantly badly written rules, and competatively it's a junkheap. If we feel what makes someone good at the game is not how they win, but how they play, maybe there should be competative events where the focus isn't on who wins the game, but a combination of the narrative aspects of the hobby.

Perhaps "Winning" is who tells the best story, not who scores the most VP. [With a scoring system that often isn't even the same as the one published by GW, anyway.]

But do the people who think these things are what make a person a "good" 40k player actually want competitions aimed mainly along these lines?

Like, I would be inclined to say that being friendly and a good sportsman and so on is most important, but it's not like I want sportsmanship competitions. There are already competitions that test list-writing ability, but these are necessarily fairly small-scale and local -- you avoid netlisting by having weird rules and requirements. There are obviously competitions that to a large extent test whether you can put together a strong list with help from other people (including just the internet). Lots of tournaments include painting awards, or might as well have them insofar as people with very well-painted armies get lots of attention for them. Lots of tournaments test your knowledge of the rules.

The only two that don't seem to me to come up a lot already in competitions are "putting together a fluffy army" and "good sportsmanship". Of course, "good sportsmanship" comes up all the time in casual play -- it determines whether someone can find people to play with. I don't see that this is an unaddressed aspect of the game, it's just not really one that's suited to formal competition, because "winning" is actually beside the point by definition. Obviously some tournaments have something like a sportsmanship score but nobody thinks this is doing a particularly good job of capturing it. It's also not something that I actually care about as it pertains to tournaments that I'm not participating in -- my interest in LVO is mostly to do with what lists and tactics were effective and not in how nice everyone was to each other. And then I'm not sure that anyone actually wants to hear about why someone else's army is fluffy -- army fluff seems to me to be primarily a personal thing that few other people care about outside of the context of particular narrative games where you want to explain why the two armies are fighting. I guess you could have like a short story contest or something?

I play games to have fun, either for me or others. I'll retread old content in games with friends if it's new to them so we can laugh and smile together. For 40K If it's a friend, we might throw 500 points against 1000 just to see how it goes. For an even match with I don't care if someone messes up their list by a fair margin say 10% or so - nobody's perfect. I'd like them to have their army base painted at least with another colour and proxies for busted models only or if they're short on models for their list by one or two (they're the first models to be removed from the table and never anything big).

Having fun. If the games no fun, whether your playing hardcore lists or fun fluffy lists, means the game just isn't worth it.

In order of importance:
1. Being a good sportsman in-game
2. Being fun out-of-game company
3. Knowing the rules decently, but being free-flowing enough with the rules to not slow down play.

One of these..

Does it have to be an AmEx? What about Visa? What about those numbers? If I post my credit card numbers, can someone verify that it'll still work for me to become a Good 40k Player?

Thanks, I just want to make sure I have what it takes to be Good.