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.

Take a step back from 40k and play some other games to get a better understanding of what some people are talking about in terms of 40k's lack of depth.

Also note lack of depth is not the same as bad game. It just means that the number of meaningful decisions is pretty small.

Comparativley speaking auticus, what do you think is a better Wargame then?

I am just curious.

 Horst wrote:


Yes, my 3 examples involved just picking where to move models and what to shoot... but that's literally the entire game. You can't just easily dismiss "just move and shoot things right" as non tactical choices.

That's kind of the point. The game is tactically shallow because, by your own admission, it's all about "just move and shoot things". Even within that fairly wide definition of the game the decision trees involved are very simplistic. Other games have many other factors to consider outside of "what do I want to kill". To give 3 examples from other games I know well enough to comment on:

1. WM/H involves relatively short ranges and fairly short movement distances. Positioning your units to maximise damage and minimise risk is a non-trivial skill due to the fact you can't generally put units exactly where you want and shoot/charge whatever you want. You also need to be aware of the mission parameters at all times as instant victories are possible. Terrain has proper rules and influences the movement and shooting of most units in the game. Units tend to be quite specialised in what they are good against so it's possible to be caught out quite badly if you deploy or position units incorrectly. 40k's extremely long ranges and extremely fast movement speeds almost completely negate most of these decisions. Knights are the perfect example - they're a unit with effectively infinite range guns given the size of the table, they have very fast movement speed and are impossible to pin down in combat while simultaneously being very dangerous in close combat. They involve basically no decision making at all other than "what do I want to shoot".

2. X-Wing involves movement decisions based on hidden information and resource management in the form of actions that allow you to buff your units for a round. Each round you'll have to try to out-think your opponent in the planning phase by predicting where they want to move and formulating a plan to counter that, all while not actually knowing which move they are planning. You also have to think about whether to spend tokens offensively or defensively at different times. The uncertain nature of the movement further affects target priority. You may want to shoot specific ship but you've got a perfect opportunity to damage or maybe even kill another, which you may not get again due to the nature of the movement system.

3. Epic. The alternating activation system, combined with the blast marker system and the difficulty involved in completely killing enemy units makes for a very deep game. There are usually pros and cons to every decision and the standard mission encourages aggressive play without making to the only way to play. Units are generally very specialised, or mediocre at both AT and AP duties, and ranges are meaningfully short for the most part. Different units are used for different roles and its important to have a mix of these for success. Titans are very scary, for example, but the system allows opponents to completely ignore them if they want as their destructive power may not be enough to influence the game on its own. Co-ordinating formations in assault is a real skill and acts as a force multiplier that rewards careful planning and execution.

I think one of the main things that separates out these games from 40k is how unpredictable they can be. While there are still patterns of play for all armies/squadrons/warbands in any game, I can play the same game of Epic or X-Wing with the same forces on identical tables and end up with very different games as a result, Why? Because my opponent's decisions meaningfully change the way I play and because I can change the way I play without it being detrimental to me because there are many, many different ways to utilise the forces at my disposal. Compare that to 40k, where the pattern of play in the first turn for a given army is almost always fixed. This is down to a whole host of factors but mainly due to very long weapon ranges meaning many weapons always have range to what they want to shoot, fast movement speeds allowing units to get where they want to go easily and non-functional terrain rules not menainfgully hampering either of those things. Additionally, things like Stratagems involve no real decision-making or even CP management since 40k vastly rewards front-loaded damage in the first 1-2 turns. There's no reason not to use the "shoot twice" stratagem, for example, or the "extra damage" stratagem for your given army. Psychic powers are the same. There's very little interaction in the psychic phase. You pick your powers and cast them without any decisions from your opponent beyond "I'd like to stop that one" but the shallow system means there's no tactics involved beyond that.

So yes, 40k is very shallow compared to other games, mainly due to the fact it really is just about picking where to move and what to shoot, because those two decisions don't have enough restrictions applied to them to make either require sufficient trade-offs. That's not to say it's a terrible game in general. I think between two armies that aren't fully optimised tournament lists it can be an enjoyable experience and I think it provides a decent framework for creating a more rewarding and enjoyable game. The background is also a huge draw and the spectacle of two well-painted armies clashing on the tabletop is very impressive. It's a social experience. It's artistic and creative. What it isn't is tactically deep.

 ArbitorIan wrote:

Um... pretty much all of those things have been part of the game since before American pickup game culture OR wargame tournaments existed. They’re also all elements that are really good ideas in a game that involves a huge range of models, which either player can pick and choose from and frequently add to (which is their core business model). They’re not designed for tournaments any more than they’re designed to fit their business model of selling individual units of toy soldiers. After all, the majority of their customers don’t play tournaments.
GW may accept that they also sell to people with other approaches to the game, but all their major products are designed so that frequent, repeat customers can add new models to armies at will. Everything you suggested supports that model.
.

I think it's fairer to say they can support games against random strangers with minimal preparation (i.e. Pick up games) etc, rather than stating it's designed to support it. The writers at gw often come from the 'traditional' school of thought, which often does involve, if not co-operation, at the very least collaboration. They can also support narrative games, tournaments, campaigns, and whatever else. I think it's fairer to say gw intend it to be an open-ended game, and leave the specifics up to the players and how they want to approach their games, rather than anything else and claiming 'well my way of playing is obviously what they intended, and anything else is an unfortunate bonus' - that's just projection d confirmation bias,in my mind.

Another point to consider is the rise of boxed/boardgames in the industry over the last few years and how this has changed things. Speaking to retail (one of my buddies is a manager at a national chain of game stores), you get the impression that these sell better, have greeter market penetration and better sales margins. Stores definitely have a preference for these - boxed games have a wider audience than collectible army games, and anecdotally, quite a few of my friends, especially the older one have a preference for the boxed/board game these days to the tabletop game. Game design has been drifting more and more to a 'hybrid' model that exists in a space somewhere between what we regard as a more traditional wargames and 'boardgames out of a box'. It's getting to the stage where the traditional walls between these distinct types of games are blurring, or even disappearing.
Gw have not been idle or ignorant of this, and have also jumped on the 'boxed/board game' wagon - betrayal at calth, burning of prospero, blackstone fortress, rogue trader, bloodbowl, lost patrol, shadespire/underworlds, titanicus, heck even necromunda to a large extent. I remember reading that a large part of what kept gw up a few years ago with the debacle of the Aos launch was betrayal at calth, almost on its own - by all accounts, bac was a monstrous success. I don't know if this means the game was excellent (never met anyone who played it) or if people were just happy to see a really good discount (to be fair. I've bought 2 bac boxes for this reason) on their wardollies. Regardless, gw have diversified into this direction in addition to their traditional 'big two', and a lot of their old specialist games seem to have found a home here, as well as new releases. I think any talk on gw's continued success should also consider this, at the very least rather than just state there's more 40k tournaments, therefore more 40k tournament players therefore competitive 40k is driving gw's success. I know, from my perspective, as well as a better social media presence, communication, and some awesome models (primaris got me back into 40k on their own), I find these games more appealing than 'traditional' 40k. I know with the guys I play with, our favourite game last year was probably shadespire/underworlds, and blackstone fortress is going down an absolute storm at the moment (2 strongholds conquered, we're getting ready to raid the third soon). Next wanted game? Necromunda. Tournaments? Meh.

The main problem with competitive 40k is that it requires a completely different mindset than what gets presented virtually everywhere else. GW focuses on the spectacle of the armies, and how you should pick an army/units based on the background, what you think is cool, etc. and it's pretty clear that's how the studio approaches the game internally.

Competitive play requires you to completely separate the background from the game and approaches the game as only a game in a void. You don't give a damn about the background or the source material (despite that being probably the only good part about 40k, as the rules are pretty awful), or really anything else other than "how good is this" and your typical competitive army barely looks like anything even remotely resembling how the army is presented in the books. Very much like how you barely meet anyone who plays Magic who knows or cares about the lore, despite there being a pretty rich background to the game. It's just totally ignored because the game is a game first, and everything else second.

That, I think, is the hardest part to get in. It seems to me that most competitive 40k players seem to have come to 40k either from other competitive games (e.g. Magic, not necessarily wargames) or play 40k just because it's the most popular game, rather than actually being invested in the game for its rich source material, since I would guess people who came to 40k many years ago for its cool background would be less inclined to throw it away (which is exactly the problem I have).

In other games, I had no issue with it. I played WM/H and didn't give a gak about the background (and some of it was pretty good) when I was playing the game: The game was completely independent of its lore. With 40k though, the background is what attracted me, and to this day it feels "dirty" to do things like mix in some Tzeentch daemons just for a cheap battalion with a primarily Nurgle force (because I remember a time when that wasn't allowed at worst, or at best your group would consider you a douchebag for crapping over the background if you did it) or just take little bits and pieces from various forces without anything to really tie them together.

Not Online!!! wrote:
Comparativley speaking auticus, what do you think is a better Wargame then?

I am just curious.

Saga, battletech, bolt action, infinity, kings of war, 6th ed whfb, , dba, warmaster, epic, warlords of nowhere, lord of the rings/middle earth, adeptus titanicus, squad leader. To name some ive played most of my life or throughout their lifespan.

Im not a fan of wm/h but would agree it too is deeper, though was one of the first games to begin the whole deckbuilding game as a “wargame” that 40k and aos became.

My first two years doing gt play i played eldar (3rd ed) and won 99% of my games solely because of my list and everyone rlse played marines almost exclusively. I won a bunch of rtts and placed high at gt with leaf blower IG ... because of my list. The list and pucking targets was the main skill then and is the main skill today.

You cant get away with that in most other games.

 Ordana wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
Part of the problem is that "competitive" 40k is basically all listbuilding, with little or no actual strategy despite the competitive 40k people lauding the game for its "tactical depth". Most of that depth is what unit to pick and what to attack, very little in the way of real strategy yet somehow people seem to claim it has so much skill involved.

I have now read a lot of things trying to make 40k into an e-sport with paid sponsorships and the ability to get a living wage by playing it. This mindset is so far away from what wargaming is meant to be that it's like trying to prove the world is flat against all proof otherwise.

Try playing something other then ITC missions,
The latest CA for example.
heck, go wild. Play Maelstrom.

CA is even more list buildy. ITC is all about stopping the, say, tau gunline from winning the game because there's no effective LOS blocking terrain terrain and they just tabled you in one turn.

stratigo wrote:

 Ordana wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
Part of the problem is that "competitive" 40k is basically all listbuilding, with little or no actual strategy despite the competitive 40k people lauding the game for its "tactical depth". Most of that depth is what unit to pick and what to attack, very little in the way of real strategy yet somehow people seem to claim it has so much skill involved.

I have now read a lot of things trying to make 40k into an e-sport with paid sponsorships and the ability to get a living wage by playing it. This mindset is so far away from what wargaming is meant to be that it's like trying to prove the world is flat against all proof otherwise.

Try playing something other then ITC missions,
The latest CA for example.
heck, go wild. Play Maelstrom.

CA is even more list buildy. ITC is all about stopping the, say, tau gunline from winning the game because there's no effective LOS blocking terrain terrain and they just tabled you in one turn.

This I don't agree with, ITC focuses on list building more than anything else I've seen. CA has its gimmicks, Maelstrom is entire gimmick so it's harder to build a list around because you may get the mission that you didn't prep for. ITC you know exactly what to do since all the missions (this might have changed with the last Champions missions set but it was true before) are essentially identical other than where objectives get placed, so you don't have to even think of the mission changing what your goals are to win.

So you guys have determined that 40k is a shallow and badly written game with few redeeming values.

Why do you play? 40k sounds like a horrible waste of time.

I personally do not play 40k any longer and sold all of my stuff off over the last couple of years. I get why people do play it though, largely because its the only game in existence where you know whatever city you travel to there will be a 40k group for you to play in so your investment will not get wasted.

Unlike pretty much every other game where you are risking having a model collection sitting around and not getting to use it.

That is a poor reason to do anything, particularly something as expensive as 40k.

If you want to play something else, then do the work and build the community to support it.

 Crimson Devil wrote:
So you guys have determined that 40k is a shallow and badly written game with few redeeming values.

Why do you play? 40k sounds like a horrible waste of time.

we don't we just enjoying poking the GW faithful

I know several of you guys are arguing in bad faith, because that is your real hobby. I'm asking the less self aware why they play?

I'd guess its like auticus said, it may be a wonky game but its often the only game in town, also, at least in the UK, outside of larger cities, a lot play is done at clubs so the social element plays a part

 Crimson Devil wrote:


If you want to play something else, then do the work and build the community to support it.

To paraphrase Blade, you have an easier time trying to ice-skate uphill.

I've tried several times to get the "other game" going on and given up every single time when people just were not willing to put the effort in and/or saw I was bringing both armies so saw no reason to invest in it. Eventually we got an FLGS in our city so interest for non-GW things picked up slightly but even then people were not interested and only wanted to play Tragic the Saddening. I was glad when GW did a hard reboot on 40k and I've not played many games but it was not through lack of trying (another victim of MTG. 40k of all things...), but looking at how 8th has been twisted and abused and some of the abominations of "armies" that rear their heads I'm kinda glad I'm not actively playing at times.

Deadnight wrote:

 ArbitorIan wrote:

Um... pretty much all of those things have been part of the game since before American pickup game culture OR wargame tournaments existed. They’re also all elements that are really good ideas in a game that involves a huge range of models, which either player can pick and choose from and frequently add to (which is their core business model). They’re not designed for tournaments any more than they’re designed to fit their business model of selling individual units of toy soldiers. After all, the majority of their customers don’t play tournaments.
GW may accept that they also sell to people with other approaches to the game, but all their major products are designed so that frequent, repeat customers can add new models to armies at will. Everything you suggested supports that model.
.

I think it's fairer to say they can support games against random strangers with minimal preparation (i.e. Pick up games) etc, rather than stating it's designed to support it. The writers at gw often come from the 'traditional' school of thought, which often does involve, if not co-operation, at the very least collaboration. They can also support narrative games, tournaments, campaigns, and whatever else. I think it's fairer to say gw intend it to be an open-ended game, and leave the specifics up to the players and how they want to approach their games, rather than anything else and claiming 'well my way of playing is obviously what they intended, and anything else is an unfortunate bonus' - that's just projection d confirmation bias,in my mind.

Oh yeah, I totally agree. This was in response to Peregrine’s claim that GW games are ‘designed’ specifically for tournaments and pickup games. My point was like yours - they’re designed to be flexible, and one of the ways that CAN be played is, say, pickup games.

The boar game market is really interesting. I think that board games have become such a big market (and a much more mainstream one) that moving ‘sideways’ into that industry is a really good way of GW moving their game more into the mainstream and hopefully attracting more adult players.

I remember at my last job a few years back the game director and I were trying to get a few of the designers into 40k since and he and I were long time fans who decided to come back after hearing about 8th edition shaking things up. Everyone picked their factions and put their armies together and even got most of them fully painted before we sat down and scheduled a few intro games after work. After one or two games, both new players (both professional game designers) immediately grasped that:

1. A game of 40k is largely decided in the list-building phase
2. The optimal configuration for a given faction will always be drawn from an highly limited pool of units
3. The optimal game plan for a given list will nearly always be identical every time you play

So of the two new players, one guy lost his first game, studied his faction, came back a few weeks later, executed his faction's best combo, won, and then completely lost interest. The other guy was more enthusiastic about the physical spectacle, and while the game itself didn't capture him, he wanted to give it a chance and finish painting his army first... to "experience the feeling of playing with a fully painted army." In the end, that wasn't enough either.

The really unfortunate thing about the design of 40k is that the thing it asks you to do to win a game is almost completely separate and isolated from the initial promises of fun it makes to draw you in. 40k says to a new player, "Hey check out these cool models, you'll have fun choosing whatever you want, mixing/matching units to suit your unique, individual playstyle and then laying them out on the tabletop." But a new player quickly learns that isn't the case and that to win they're only allowed to do one thing and one thing only. Or at most a very limited handful of things.

For people who want deep alignment between the most enjoyable/advertised parts of the game and the thing the game design asks you to do in order to win, this is a huge problem.

I have been an event organizer for 20 odd years. I do build the events for the other games.

Problem is why invest in saga or bolt action even if people consider them better when at any time my investment gets nullified by no one wanting to show up?

Meanwhile my groups 40k narrative regularly pulls over 30 people and our aos has 20.

The gw games are not played for their deep and tactical rules, they are invested in and played because everyone else plays and youre money is relatively safe.

 Crimson Devil wrote:
So you guys have determined that 40k is a shallow and badly written game with few redeeming values.

Why do you play? 40k sounds like a horrible waste of time.

For all the reasons I set out at the end of my post a few up from this one. I still like the background and the models, the social aspect is appealing and the group I play with aren't trying to play 40k as a cut-throat competitive event so we can get enjoyable games without hyper-optimised lists. We all mostly have at least 2 different armies each so we can vary what we bring, which helps keep things fresh too. It's also one of only 2-3 wargames you can consistently play in my area, which possibly helps with overlooking many of the flaws.

I think the fact we've largely accepted the game is pretty shallow and completely unsuited to competitive play actually helps us enjoy it more than we otherwise would because we no what to expect and what not to expect from our games.

 auticus wrote:
I have been an event organizer for 20 odd years. I do build the events for the other games.

Problem is why invest in saga or bolt action even if people consider them better when at any time my investment gets nullified by no one wanting to show up?

Meanwhile my groups 40k narrative regularly pulls over 30 people and our aos has 20.

The gw games are not played for their deep and tactical rules, they are invested in and played because everyone else plays and youre money is relatively safe.

I think I'd do something else before I played a game just because everyone else was playing, seems like you'd be wasting time/forcing yourself. It's possible to be critical of 40ks rules from a competitive perspective and still enjoy the game.

Be that as it may that is the #1 cited reason why people keep buying in. Because they can always get a game.

 Crimson Devil wrote:
So you guys have determined that 40k is a shallow and badly written game with few redeeming values.

Why do you play? 40k sounds like a horrible waste of time.

MOD. THAT. gak.

Going through digital copies of my old WD back catalogue (and some on either side of that) I'd forgotten just how often both the WD crew and the actual game designers would throw the traditional rules out of the window to make a different style of game. Many of the campaigns they produced articles for essentially advocated some variation of "ignore all these elements of the main game and do this instead", almost always centred around the list construction phase oddly enough, almost like a tacit admission that the base list building system was horribly broken a lot of the time and would produce gakky games. There's plenty of WD articles for WHFB for example that basically advocate taking only lvl 1 or 2 wizards, no monsterous creatures, limits on war machines, no characters above hero level and a cap on magic items across the whole army (usually 100 or so), often followed by carefully worded statements that can be paraphrased as "you'll find this more fun".

I don't play that much 40k anymore, but normally when I do it's a bastardised version of 2nd edition (complete CC over haul, unless it's a smallish game) with enough house rules that it practically qualifies as its own edition, played using custom(ish) missions. This is one of the reasons I don't understand the tournament mindset of using basically a very narrow, fairly generic mission set and letting people choose some of their own objectives etc. The easiest and fastest way to stop people trying to exploit certain broken combos or negative styles of play is to use mission variety to severely punish people whose lists are designed to do things like just sitting in a corner of the table (we have a custom mission for example called Over The Top, which basically involves you carrying out a WW1 style attack across the battlefield. You sit in your deployment zone and you WILL lose).

This is part of the problem with 40K. It has a base rule set so that two random people can meet up and play a game using an agreed set of principles, such as the army lists. This version of the game does that incredibly poorly and is overall an unsatisfying experience. So why do I care? Because I'd like to be able to play more games with people outside of just a small group of friends. And we shouldn't have to fall back on a heavily modded older version of the game with a bunch of custom made missions to have any fun with it.

 Irkjoe wrote:

 auticus wrote:
I have been an event organizer for 20 odd years. I do build the events for the other games.

Problem is why invest in saga or bolt action even if people consider them better when at any time my investment gets nullified by no one wanting to show up?

Meanwhile my groups 40k narrative regularly pulls over 30 people and our aos has 20.

The gw games are not played for their deep and tactical rules, they are invested in and played because everyone else plays and youre money is relatively safe.

I think I'd do something else before I played a game just because everyone else was playing, seems like you'd be wasting time/forcing yourself. It's possible to be critical of 40ks rules from a competitive perspective and still enjoy the game.

The problem seem to be is they can't enjoy the game because other people are playing it wrong.

I bet most tournament players don't realize they have this power over them.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Grimtuff wrote:

 Crimson Devil wrote:


If you want to play something else, then do the work and build the community to support it.

To paraphrase Blade, you have an easier time trying to ice-skate uphill.

I've tried several times to get the "other game" going on and given up every single time when people just were not willing to put the effort in and/or saw I was bringing both armies so saw no reason to invest in it. Eventually we got an FLGS in our city so interest for non-GW things picked up slightly but even then people were not interested and only wanted to play Tragic the Saddening. I was glad when GW did a hard reboot on 40k and I've not played many games but it was not through lack of trying (another victim of MTG. 40k of all things...), but looking at how 8th has been twisted and abused and some of the abominations of "armies" that rear their heads I'm kinda glad I'm not actively playing at times.

It's not easy, but it is doable. I've succeeded several times, and had some spectacular failure. You never know which games will stick, but I can tell you card players are a bad fit for miniatures war games.

 Crimson Devil wrote:
So you guys have determined that 40k is a shallow and badly written game with few redeeming values.

Why do you play? 40k sounds like a horrible waste of time.

I did largely stop playing 40k. But apoc rules at their core are really good, though the faction to faction and unit to unit balance is off. Like I’d be happy to see competitive 40k turn into competitive apoc, but 40k is too well established these days

I continue to play 40K because the community is more vibrant, so even if I play other mini games more regularly I will always make sure I have at least one 40K army on hand. I also continue to enjoy 40K because I find GW's world building in that respect to be top class. Its easy to get excited about 40K based on the fluff alone, and in a casual setting it can be a lot of fun to put my Emperor's Children on the table and have a battle with them. Its exciting to bring the fluff alive on the table.

That said, I agree with others that 40K is much poorer in terms of actual gameplay compared to other games I play;

Bolt Action adds random activation and a detailed moral and pinning system that forces players to constantly adapt to changing circumstances. The problem with Bolt Action is that while the community is growing, it is more fragmented and can be difficult to get games in. Also WW2 is great, but sometimes you just have a Sci Fi itch that Bolt Action cannot satisfy.

Malifaux adds alternating activations, is a skrimish game with far more model to model interactions, and is heavily objective focused, taking some of the pressure off of generic "kill them all" style lists that plague many other systems. Malifaux has been suffering a decline in active players during the later parts of 2E. Third Edition has just released last month, so it will be interesting to see if the community can build up steam.

Freeblades is a really small skrimish game. It is very well designed and I have enjoyed it a lot. It has a very very small community though, although I am lucky to have a pocket of players near me that are dead set on building a community out here. (Which is how I got in in the first place).

To those saying that "you should just build a community" for games you like... that is pretty unrealistic. Most of us have "Jobs" or "School / University" or "children" which are major time commitments. Building a community of any type and organizing events and tournaments is a big time commitment and requires dogged consistency as well. Many wargamers just don't have time to build a community from scratch. So we pick up armies that feature in the local we play in.

 auticus wrote:
Be that as it may that is the #1 cited reason why people keep buying in. Because they can always get a game.

This is so true.

But I will say that 40K is often played "sloppily", and will result in the sort of game that relies on going first with a gunline and doing crippling damage before the opponent can get out of the gate. Or the list building matchups where one army is just either flatly superior, or a hard-counter to the other army. However, the experience of the game can be heavily adjusted with terrain, missions or game-size, without even modifying any rules. So you can do the customization necessary to get a different experience if you want to, and having such a large player pool means you're more likely able to convince others to go along with a few adjustments.

I like playing 40k both casually and in tournaments. I also like the game. It scratches a particular itch for me and I get buggy if I don't play it enough. I think if I could discover the secret ingredient I'd bottle and sell it.

bouncingboredom wrote:

 Crimson Devil wrote:
So you guys have determined that 40k is a shallow and badly written game with few redeeming values.

Why do you play? 40k sounds like a horrible waste of time.

MOD. THAT. gak.

Going through digital copies of my old WD back catalogue (and some on either side of that) I'd forgotten just how often both the WD crew and the actual game designers would throw the traditional rules out of the window to make a different style of game. Many of the campaigns they produced articles for essentially advocated some variation of "ignore all these elements of the main game and do this instead", almost always centred around the list construction phase oddly enough, almost like a tacit admission that the base list building system was horribly broken a lot of the time and would produce gakky games. There's plenty of WD articles for WHFB for example that basically advocate taking only lvl 1 or 2 wizards, no monsterous creatures, limits on war machines, no characters above hero level and a cap on magic items across the whole army (usually 100 or so), often followed by carefully worded statements that can be paraphrased as "you'll find this more fun".

I used to like reading those bat reps as much as playing the game back then, my favorite part of the mag, with al the pics and counters and arrows showing movement and interviews after each match. Man, that was the shizzle...

bouncingboredom wrote:


I don't play that much 40k anymore, but normally when I do it's a bastardised version of 2nd edition (complete CC over haul, unless it's a smallish game) with enough house rules that it practically qualifies as its own edition, played using custom(ish) missions. This is one of the reasons I don't understand the tournament mindset of using basically a very narrow, fairly generic mission set and letting people choose some of their own objectives etc. The easiest and fastest way to stop people trying to exploit certain broken combos or negative styles of play is to use mission variety to severely punish people whose lists are designed to do things like just sitting in a corner of the table (we have a custom mission for example called Over The Top, which basically involves you carrying out a WW1 style attack across the battlefield. You sit in your deployment zone and you WILL lose).

This is part of the problem with 40K. It has a base rule set so that two random people can meet up and play a game using an agreed set of principles, such as the army lists. This version of the game does that incredibly poorly and is overall an unsatisfying experience. So why do I care? Because I'd like to be able to play more games with people outside of just a small group of friends. And we shouldn't have to fall back on a heavily modded older version of the game with a bunch of custom made missions to have any fun with it.

I wish I had the peeps and the time, cuz this sounds right.
I was so hoping that so-called 8th ed would do something this smart, but instead AO$ified it.

The tourble has been the CCG player base influence, plus declining attention in both target market and design mindset, imho.

 slave.entity wrote:
I remember at my last job a few years back the game director and I were trying to get a few of the designers into 40k since and he and I were long time fans who decided to come back after hearing about 8th edition shaking things up. Everyone picked their factions and put their armies together and even got most of them fully painted before we sat down and scheduled a few intro games after work. After one or two games, both new players (both professional game designers) immediately grasped that:

1. A game of 40k is largely decided in the list-building phase
2. The optimal configuration for a given faction will always be drawn from an highly limited pool of units
3. The optimal game plan for a given list will nearly always be identical every time you play

I think they needed to play far more than a few games to better assess. New players are almost always going to get beaten, mostly because lack of skill and experience, like in anything else. Veteran players win, because of experience. And those with equal playing experience win on skill.

Also, my tourney experience disagrees with these conclusions.

#1? Largely? I would say from experience that it ought to be said in the same breath (or typed in the same paragraph) that 'list building' is a good chunk of winning, with some dice luck, but by far the larger portion of winning comes from player skill. Give me a top rated list, lemme get in 12 or so good practice games. Then give a top level GT player the same list, brand new to him, and I am going to lose because the player with the better skills will make better target priority decisions, keep objectives in focus, and simply win the game on skill. Give us both poor, awful lists, and we'll likely get the same results; I will lose.

As equals?
45% list building?
45% skill?
10% match up, terrain & dice luck?
46, 46, 8%?
49, 49 2%?

I think more like:
51 to 65% skill
48 to 34% list
the rest to match up, terrain & dice.
Approximately.

Yes, there is a sizable degree of list building involved in winning. If one shows up with only 2k worth a regular tactical squads (3e thru 5e, PFist Sgt, meltagun or plasmagun, ML/LasCan), and minimum HQs for the battalions, then yes, you're likely to lose against most other lists that show up at tourneys, unless the opponent is far more a chump than you.

I just find that too often in discussion here on dakka, that list building and GW's codex writing, are the scapegoats of players who don't do well at tourneys, or are unhappy with the game, and like to gripe and complain.

The data available from ITC shows that there are many more variations on lists that win, than in previous editions. That's a point that one might argue against, by saying, 'it is disingenuous because there are *more* codices and builds than ever', but I would re-counter "that as 8e gets older, we continue to see new, untried combos that do well" (not just evolution because of bi-annual FAQ/nerfs).

For example, Don Hooson (ITC, Calif) does well with unconventional lists: 3rd place this last BAO with Lords Discordant and Hell Turkeys, 1st place last year with a 'different' Plague Marine build that elicited much commentary on how unusual/not-previously-experienced it was).

For the many on this thread that are in the "list building is the main reason you win or lose" group, are you using BCP, BestCoastPairings? Are you looking at lists that place at top tables? I invite you to check those top table lists and those on down to the kiddie pool. See how many of Brandon Grant's long standing A.M., 6 to 9 BullGryn+Castellan+60 footer (does it have a name?) list there are at the big GTs that finish less than 50% W/L. See how well the dual Callidus/Forgeworld Custodes lists:

https://nightsatthegametable.com/blog/2019/06/07/analyzing-geoff-robinsons-bao-winning-custodes/

... actually do when in the hands of mediocre players who are not in the top 100 ITC scoring ranks.

My opinion about listbuilding comes from having been a powergamer running the abusive lists for about 10 years. I thought I was hot ****.

So did all of my tournament mates that ran with me. We destroyed our casual community. We were likely "TFG".

I regularly placed in GTs in the top 20 and in whfb made it to a top 5 placing and a top 8 placing and have a trophy room with a dozen RTT eagles.

Take away my power lists though and my win/loss ratio drops to about 50/50.

My "awakening" came when a really good player beat my powerlist with an average list, not once... but twice in a row. I started questioning my own ability and then started taking weaker lists to improve my play.

That was when I discovered just how much of a crutch my list was.

And every-single-player that played with me, traveled across NA to GTs, had an identical experience. Take their powerlist away and they were by far not destroying people any longer. They'd win as much as they lost.

I have in 20 odd years run into about four or five individuals that were truly just great no matter what list they took. But those guys are very very rare. The majority of all powergamers, including myself, were reduced to shells of ourselves when not flaunting our mathhammer monstrosities.

Because math is a powerful force in this dice game and when you aren't stacking the odds in your favor, you find that you will succumb most of the time like even the filthy casuals because they are running the same tier of lists as you.

I have also noted over the past decade that the guys that do well with their math hammer monster lists in 40k and whfb/aos are only average at best at games that require table skill and don't lean on listbuilding as heavily.

This is why my opinion is colored the way it is.