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.

I honestly don't have a lot of exp with GSC but they are kind of a unique army when special deployment rules. It doesn't change a lot though. Units you can't see aren't on objectives. You take the objectives. Then when targets present themselves - you kill their best units. If you can't - you lose.

 Xenomancers wrote:
I honestly don't have a lot of exp with GSC but they are kind of a unique army when special deployment rules. It doesn't change a lot though. Units you can't see aren't on objectives. You take the objectives. Then when targets present themselves - you kill their best units. If you can't - you lose.

You don't score on the first turn, and it is unusual for an opponent to be able to cross the board and claim the objectives nearest or in your DZ top of turn 1, and going second you aren't going to be able to take midboard objectives anyway.

Seizing midboard objectives hyperaggressively can offer an opponent opportunities they didn't otherwise have, should they not have deployed their units in the suicidally aggressive manner you believe should be the default.

I understand that I'm talking about one particular gamestate of GSC vs marines because it's the most recent example I can readily recall, but I don't think you get to worm your way out of "killing is always paramount" in the middle of a meta absolutely chockablock full of armies that either are by nature or can flexibly become super durability skewed.

 Xenomancers wrote:
Units you can't see aren't on objectives.

This isn't a universal truth at all. You can usually see them with some of your army.

There are secondaries, too. They account for a not insignificant portion of the score.

Harlequins had access to exactly the same offensive capabilities they do right now prior to their PA update. The ability to deploy defensively around a shadowseer and use stratagems that allow them to take a hit should they lose first turn is one factor that took them from middle to low tier to uber high-tier competitively.

That, and the whole meta being defined by Sv and AP, two stats that they absolutely scoff at, anyway.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Units you can't see aren't on objectives.

This isn't a universal truth at all. You can usually see them with some of your army.

There are secondaries, too. They account for a not insignificant portion of the score.

^this. All you need to do to hide a unit out of line of sight is prevent an optimal targeting from your opponent. Trying to hide everything from everything is almost always a total impossibility, and if you can you're probably playing some kind of hyper-skew null deploy list or you've got a super wacky terrain setup.

I think Harlequins also benefited from a bit of points inflation across other armies in the jump to 9th. If Troupes were say 2 more points a model and there was 5-10 points on Starweavers it would quickly add up. This grows less meaningful as the codexes are updated, but still.

Really though, a GSC player tired of Ridgerunners is a GSC player tired of life.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Units you can't see aren't on objectives.

This isn't a universal truth at all. You can usually see them with some of your army.

There are secondaries, too. They account for a not insignificant portion of the score.

There is literally a rule. That objectives can not be within terrain. For the majority of the scenarios the objectives are in the middle of the table.

the_scotsman wrote:
I'm not responding to this idiotic "tactics don't exist" canard, in my eyes it's pretty much over when you've got someone who's worked for an actual armed forces organization saying "no, your definition of tactics vs strategy is not correct here folks."

Ehhh, to be fair theres a lot of discourse in modern western armed forces (especially within the US) about how professional military leadership has generally failed to properly understand strategy and operational art, and how often even senior military leaders who should know better will mistake tactical, logistical, and operational planning with strategic planning. The fact that the guy has a military pedigree doesn't automatically make him correct given the context in which strategic thinking within numerous military organizations is seen as having atrophied.

More directly, his military service is largely irrelevant within the context of tabletop toy soldiers where terms like "strategy" and "tactics" mean things pretty different from actual military operations and planning.

It's also important to note that killing is short hand for the thing I was talking about earlier in measuring your dice pools.

What you are trying to actually do is keep your effective dice pool value up and their effective dice pool value down. The most direct way to do that is to kill and remove models. But things like tri pointing in 8th removed vehicles and their dice without having to go through all the trouble of killing them.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Units you can't see aren't on objectives.

This isn't a universal truth at all. You can usually see them with some of your army.

There are secondaries, too. They account for a not insignificant portion of the score.

There is literally a rule. That objectives can not be within terrain. For the majority of the scenarios the objectives are in the middle of the table.

1) 3" to hold
2) being on or near an objective doesn't make you visible to the whole table.

 Lance845 wrote:
A specific end.

A overall aim.

The Spartans strategy of holding a pass where they could limit the number of Persians they would have to fight at any given time was very effective at allowing the tactic of the Phalanx formation to keep the soldiers doing the fighting alive.

The strategy forced the enemy to face them on their terms. The tactics is how they kept winning the fights.

Lance is on fire.
I about broke my exalt button..l

 jeff white wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
A specific end.

A overall aim.

The Spartans strategy of holding a pass where they could limit the number of Persians they would have to fight at any given time was very effective at allowing the tactic of the Phalanx formation to keep the soldiers doing the fighting alive.

The strategy forced the enemy to face them on their terms. The tactics is how they kept winning the fights.

Lance is on fire.
I about broke my exalt button..l

"Spartan tactics were so shallow. All they did was stand there with shields and spears and target valuable units."

- Xerxes

Not Online!!! wrote:
i think the smaller boards and less significant rules interaction between side and front (f.e. Armor) has significantly lowered tactical interaction imo.

This^^

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 jeff white wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
A specific end.

A overall aim.

The Spartans strategy of holding a pass where they could limit the number of Persians they would have to fight at any given time was very effective at allowing the tactic of the Phalanx formation to keep the soldiers doing the fighting alive.

The strategy forced the enemy to face them on their terms. The tactics is how they kept winning the fights.

Lance is on fire.
I about broke my exalt button..l

"Spartan tactics were so shallow. All they did was stand there with shields and spears and target valuable units."

- Xerxes

Nah. They followed the most important rule. They brought OP units.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 jeff white wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
A specific end.

A overall aim.

The Spartans strategy of holding a pass where they could limit the number of Persians they would have to fight at any given time was very effective at allowing the tactic of the Phalanx formation to keep the soldiers doing the fighting alive.

The strategy forced the enemy to face them on their terms. The tactics is how they kept winning the fights.

Lance is on fire.
I about broke my exalt button..l

"Spartan tactics were so shallow. All they did was stand there with shields and spears and target valuable units."

- Xerxes

If you step away from the thread and come in with fresh eyes you might see something sensible. Until then you mock I guess... still a blistering exchange. Lance’s distinction between strategy and tactics is useful and clear. His example of Spartans to clarify this distinction was also clear.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Xenomancers wrote:

Spoiler:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 jeff white wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
A specific end.

A overall aim.

The Spartans strategy of holding a pass where they could limit the number of Persians they would have to fight at any given time was very effective at allowing the tactic of the Phalanx formation to keep the soldiers doing the fighting alive.

The strategy forced the enemy to face them on their terms. The tactics is how they kept winning the fights.

Lance is on fire.
I about broke my exalt button..l

"Spartan tactics were so shallow. All they did was stand there with shields and spears and target valuable units."

- Xerxes

Nah. They followed the most important rule. They brought OP units.

Bullseye.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Units you can't see aren't on objectives.

This isn't a universal truth at all. You can usually see them with some of your army.

There are secondaries, too. They account for a not insignificant portion of the score.

There is literally a rule. That objectives can not be within terrain. For the majority of the scenarios the objectives are in the middle of the table.

1) 3" to hold
2) being on or near an objective doesn't make you visible to the whole table.

OFC. But it is part of target priority. Targeting units on objectives is part of target priority as well. If you cant target the units on the objective you are failing a basic rule. Follow in this order to win max games.
1. Kill their best units
2. Kill units while taking objectives (this includes taking objectives from them)
3. Stop them from killing your units.

It is this simple.
Take stronger units and it becomes simpler.

Thanks Jeff. I appreciate that you could see what I was trying to say.

It seemed that you were clarifying the OP’s concern, emphasizing that we might expect little tactical discussion when, as the OP recognizes, and other posters confirm, off table pre game “planning” ends up being the subject when people try to answer questions like “ why did my dudes lose..?”

Yup!

I WISH 40k had more tactics in it. I have more or less spent a couple years in the proposed rules section talking about the benefits of ditching some of 40ks old conventions to do just that.

It just doesn't. The game as is just doesn't have them. What little it does have is so simplistic. It's all strategy and logistics.

I wish people didn't take me saying that as an attack.

 jeff white wrote:


If you step away from the thread and come in with fresh eyes you might see something sensible. Until then you mock I guess... still a blistering exchange. Lance’s distinction between strategy and tactics is useful and clear. His example of Spartans to clarify this distinction was also clear.

Everyone who disagrees with me is wrong despite what they say and I'll cling on to random posts that have no bearing on the actual discussion to prove it!

Victory is mine!

 Lance845 wrote:
Thanks Jeff. I appreciate that you could see what I was trying to say.

Reducing table size is especially bad since it de facto devalues Range Profiles and Movement stats, which is one of the best way to actually weight skill difference between two players.
What a stupid change, if I wanted to have an AoS mid brawl experience I would have played that game

KurtAngle2 wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
Thanks Jeff. I appreciate that you could see what I was trying to say.

Reducing table size is especially bad since it de facto devalues Range Profiles and Movement stats, which is one of the best way to actually weight skill difference between two players.
What a stupid change, if I wanted to have an AoS mid brawl experience I would have played that game

This is only true in the context of 40k as is where the only metrics you can use to change things is movement and range profiles.

There are other games with other factors in play. There are versions of 40k with other factors in play. Alternating Activations gives players a rich depth of tactical decision making. Which unit do you activate? To what effect? Trying to predict how the opponent will react to whatever you do and turn that into an advantage. There is the potential for REALLY deep tactical decision making in a TT wargame. It will NEVER happen with the turn structure we have.

 jeff white wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
i think the smaller boards and less significant rules interaction between side and front (f.e. Armor) has significantly lowered tactical interaction imo.

This^^

it's just something that occured to me when i was forced by gw to switch from R&H into GSC to count as R&H.

Whenever i use the GSC rules on a bigger table, i have a lot more issues manouvering, not because i am at a disadvantage being GSC but rather because opportunity cost becomes really high.
Infact bigger tables make opportunity cost for footslogging higher in csm, meaning that i consider on occaison to bring a rhino for the added tactical flexibility and protection.

on smaller tables, why bother with a transport?
Literally any movement shenanigan allows me to cover more then enough space. Yes manouvre is still relevant, but the natural advantage a GSC army should have is basically baseline neutered on it.
Meanwhile my CSM in essence don't need anything other then warptime or a stratagem and i can bury my berzerkers in someones units without issues.

The missions still seem to lack kind of interaction (secondaries that is) and contrary seem arbitrarily unfair (still) to some factions.

Auras also didn't resolve moshpiting. Contrary they encouraged it. so why bother with interesting manouvre when it's more effective to blob up. Something in the past you'd only have done against stuff like deldar bike list that wanted to eat you piecemeal.

 Lance845 wrote:

KurtAngle2 wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
Thanks Jeff. I appreciate that you could see what I was trying to say.

Reducing table size is especially bad since it de facto devalues Range Profiles and Movement stats, which is one of the best way to actually weight skill difference between two players.
What a stupid change, if I wanted to have an AoS mid brawl experience I would have played that game

This is only true in the context of 40k as is where the only metrics you can use to change things is movement and range profiles.

There are other games with other factors in play. There are versions of 40k with other factors in play. Alternating Activations gives players a rich depth of tactical decision making. Which unit do you activate? To what effect? Trying to predict how the opponent will react to whatever you do and turn that into an advantage. There is the potential for REALLY deep tactical decision making in a TT wargame. It will NEVER happen with the turn structure we have.

There's the XKCD comic where people see that there's 8 different standards so they create a unifying standard and suddenly they have 9 competing standards. My point? If you want 40k to work a certain way I think you need to do the leadership thing and forge ahead. Write up your rules, develop them, do lots of videos about them, get local players to use them, that sort of thing. At least I'm hoping it works that way, as I agree with you that alternating actions leads to more interesting games.

 Lance845 wrote:
Yup!

I WISH 40k had more tactics in it. I have more or less spent a couple years in the proposed rules section talking about the benefits of ditching some of 40ks old conventions to do just that.

It just doesn't. The game as is just doesn't have them. What little it does have is so simplistic. It's all strategy and logistics.

I wish people didn't take me saying that as an attack.

I'll respond in reverse order....

(1) I'm not taking it as an attack on the game. Others have mentioned that army list + deployment is maybe 60% of the game, another 30% luck, and only 10% the table-level decisions. I agree with that for the most part, with the caveat that the remaining 10% can lead to some catastrophic fails on occasion, and that while most of the decisions are relatively straightforward, they still matter and they still constitute "a decision."

(2) There have been quite a number of posts clearly showing that there ARE tactical decisions to make. These include:
- Links to goonhammer tactics articles clearly showing very specific concepts for managing models, movement, etc.
- Personal stories / battlereports clearly showing tactical choice tradeoff situations that people were grappling to sort through

You asked for evidence, people gave it, and you just continued to hand wave it all away as "not tactics." Why don't you provide an example, from a different game, of what you think tactics in a miniature game are?

(3) I wish 40K had MORE tactics in at well. And as you may know, that's been the driving force behind development of ProHammer (for classic 40k editions). Stopping short of a full rework of turn order (AA, etc.) we've done a lot to bolster reaction options, add more decision points and trade-offs, rework missions and objectives to create more tactical space and opportunity for other approaches, lots of other stuff.

I'm hoping eventually to make a ProHammer version of 9th edition (but that's a long ways off).

Not Online!!! wrote:

on smaller tables, why bother with a transport?

LOS blocking, roadblocking a lane, or movement to make it deeper into their territory faster.

Auras also didn't resolve moshpiting. Contrary they encouraged it. so why bother with interesting manouvre when it's more effective to blob up. Something in the past you'd only have done against stuff like deldar bike list that wanted to eat you piecemeal.

Disagree strongly.

KurtAngle2 wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
Thanks Jeff. I appreciate that you could see what I was trying to say.

Reducing table size is especially bad since it de facto devalues Range Profiles and Movement stats, which is one of the best way to actually weight skill difference between two players.
What a stupid change, if I wanted to have an AoS mid brawl experience I would have played that game

You can thank melee only players for this. They wanted to hit things with guns with swords and this is what you get. A game where the strongest army in the game melees farther than you can shoot (quinns). Now you have the reverse problem. Why bring guns when I can melee you turn 1 and ignore your firepower with rules that completely ignore most weapons perks. Invunes and -1 to hit and wound.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

on smaller tables, why bother with a transport?

LOS blocking, roadblocking a lane, or movement to make it deeper into their territory faster.

Auras also didn't resolve moshpiting. Contrary they encouraged it. so why bother with interesting manouvre when it's more effective to blob up. Something in the past you'd only have done against stuff like deldar bike list that wanted to eat you piecemeal.

Disagree strongly.

You can disagree all you want , the removal of templates and encouragement of blobbing via aura has not improved the Game in an on Tablet tactics manner.

And los blocking with Transport is an excercise in futility with the at nowadays found in an average list.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

on smaller tables, why bother with a transport?

LOS blocking, roadblocking a lane, or movement to make it deeper into their territory faster.

Auras also didn't resolve moshpiting. Contrary they encouraged it. so why bother with interesting manouvre when it's more effective to blob up. Something in the past you'd only have done against stuff like deldar bike list that wanted to eat you piecemeal.

Disagree strongly.

You can disagree all you want , the removal of templates and encouragement of blobbing via aura has not improved the Game in an on Tablet tactics manner.

And los blocking with Transport is an exercise in futility with the at nowadays found in an average list.

Totally agree. Auras are bad for the game. However mobility is typically undervalued in points and so auras kind of keep that in check. I'd be happy with both issues being fixed. Buffs should only be single target and speed needs to have a proper cost.

Nurglitch wrote:
If you want 40k to work a certain way I think you need to do the leadership thing and forge ahead. Write up your rules, develop them, do lots of videos about them, get local players to use them, that sort of thing. At least I'm hoping it works that way, as I agree with you that alternating actions leads to more interesting games.

In fairness, there's a million wargames which all do tactical decisions better than 40k. There's no need to create a new system.

On another note; not only have recent rules for 40k reduced table size they have substantially increased mobility.
A unit can now move and fire heavy weapons at only minor penalty, they can move and fire rapid fire weapons with no penalty, they can shoot and charge, assault weapons (very common) allow you to advance and fire at minor penalty, there are many rules which allow you to advance and fire at full efficiency, or even charge!
When I started playing, in 5th edition, you couldn't fire heavy weapons if you moved, at all. If you moved, you could only fire rapid fire weapons at half range. If you fired heavy weapons, rapid fire weapons, or advanced you wouldn't be able to charge.
Not to mention changes in the reliability of deepstrike.
The difference in that is stark.

 Mezmorki wrote:
I agree with that for the most part, with the caveat that the remaining 10% can lead to some catastrophic fails on occasion, and that while most of the decisions are relatively straightforward, they still matter and they still constitute "a decision."

(2) There have been quite a number of posts clearly showing that there ARE tactical decisions to make. These include:
- Links to goonhammer tactics articles clearly showing very specific concepts for managing models, movement, etc.
- Personal stories / battlereports clearly showing tactical choice tradeoff situations that people were grappling to sort through

You asked for evidence, people gave it, and you just continued to hand wave it all away as "not tactics." Why don't you provide an example, from a different game, of what you think tactics in a miniature game are?

This is the part we disagree on and so I am going to elaborate on the words I am using and the context in which I am using them so that maybe I can clear things up.

There is a concept in game design called the illusion of choice. It happens when you purposefully or unintentionally present the players with any kind of decision in which there are clearly correct answers and clearly incorrect answers. Or advantages and disadvantages. Or anything where one answer is "right" and the others are "wrong".

This can take a lot of forms.

I gave the metaphor before of a choose your own adventure book where you turn the page and find out you died. There is no actual choice there. Just the illusion of choice. The game doesn't continue. It's over.

When World of Warcraft changed from their talent trees to their very limited fixed choices at certain levels it was talked about how many options in every tree were actually the illusion of choice because only a couple builds were actually viable in the game and many talents were never taken because they were in fact the wrong choice.

It also happens when you fill a room with clearly superior weapons and clearly inferior weapons. I am not talking about better or worse in different situations or different pros and cons. But instead of actual factual worse and superior. In 40k termagants could have the flesh borer, the strangle web, or the spike rifle and while the rifle and FB were basically the same gun with slight trade offs the strangle web was just PURE garbage. It LITERALLY did nothing. Sticking it on the datasheet is the illusion of choice. (40k is fething choked full of illusion of choice war gear btw and even illusion of choice units.)

So when I tell you that that "tactical decision" isn't really a decision I am talking about in terms of game design and specifically within the context of the illusion of choice. You COULD move your unit anywhere from 0-6" in literally 360 degree directions. You can even get some vertical distance in there with the right terrain. But just because you have nigh infinite choices doesn't mean you have anything other then 1 optimal choice and the rest are non choice sub par options. This isn't a fault of you, or me being a super genius computer, or any of that other nonsense. It's a fact born out of the interaction of the various mechanics that make up the game. A major contributing factor to that is the turn structure, but other elements play a part too.

The end result is that your strategy dictates the general direction/goal all your units should be moving in/towards and your "tactics" is working out what the single most optimal path to that at any single decision is (I.E. it's understanding the logistics of the game mechanics and the current game state). And despite the turn being broken into 4 phases it really isn't. It's just you doing everything all at once.

You can say you are making a decision. And on a surface level that's true. But you only have 1 choice. And you either make it or don't. Thats why the game is tactically shallow. Thats why we are saying it's just a flow chart and math. Thats why I have said you don't actually play against the opponent. You play against the math of the game and the law of averages.

I hope that makes my words more clear.