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 kirotheavenger wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
First lets clear up the terms.

Tactics is what you use at the table level. How you react to different situations in hopes of accomplishing certain goals. "I am going to place this unit here to try and bait that unit into moving into x position"

Strategy is your broad strokes over all plan before the game begins. Thats your list building and even your deployment.

"These units will sit in the back to protect my deployment zone and provide fire support while x,y,z will blitz into the enemy lines to stir things up".

40k basically has no tactics. It's all strategy. And that is why it's difficult to discuss and why almost all of the conversation revolves around list building.

In order to have any meaningful tactics the players have to be able to interact with each other in meaningful ways. But 99.9% of the time your strategy is your best bet with a singular clear obvious thing for you to do. And thats mostly remove enemy models as quickly as possible so they have less models to shoot back at you on the next turn. You feed them unfavorable targets if you can. You shoot your principle targets if you can. You tie up x unit if you can.

The game has no tactical depth. Thats the problem.

It seems to me that people absolutely are making the argument that 40k has essentially zero tactics.

I disagree with Lance's terminology but even with that said you'll notice his point is a bit more nuanced as he talks about "no tactical depth". Even his first statement about tactics being what you do on the tabletop would imply tactics exist. All that said, the majority of people are certainly not arguing for no tactics in 40k so if you want to believe they are maybe take it up via PM with Lance.

Your point about X-wing discussions is interesting. I wonder how a similar discussion for 40k would play out.

That's my point. I think it's very telling nobody has really done it yet. That should tell you something.

I don't think 40k handles army level maneuvers, at all.
The speed of units, range of weapons, and size of board means that a unit can relatively easily threaten pretty much the entire board on any given turn.
Even melee units can consistently move across a significant portion of the board.

I don't think 40k handles small unit tactics well, but they're there, and they're all it has.

Range as an absolute value is long, but in practical terms shooting from one area of the map to another is usually not possible, assuming regular amounts of terrain elements.

There are units with high speeds, but those are usually costly and frail. They are surely there, and you need them to correctly respond to the flows of the game.

Foot slogging units though, cannot. And the game right now is heavy on footslogging.

Vehicles too have very limited redeploy capabilities. You have to set them up on the fire lanes anticipating your opponent's moves.

As other have said, 40K can be easily lost in the deployment phase. That's because once the game starts, changing which units you have committed to which tasks, takes effort.

When talking about how a game went with your opponent, the reasons for losing are usually the following ones:

- I should have deployed x unit on that side
- I should have sent this unit on the point earlier
- I should have waited one more turn before advancing this unit.
- I should have kept this unit in reserve.

Sometimes the reason is dice dictated:

- I failed all my charges
- I failed all my powers

And stuff like that. Sometimes the dice just betray you.

Very rarely the reason is:

- I can't win with this list against your list

It happens that the matchup is simply bad for one list, but is rare. Usually when someone says that, he is just a sore loser.

Barring cases like that or cases of extremely cold dices, games are lost in the movement phase.

The game is heavy on footslogging because players feel no need to invest in greater mobility/the price of that mobility is inefficient.

In fact I find your examples very much reinforcing the idea that 40k is not an army level game.
You talked about where to send reinforcements. If you can't send reinforcements because they're too slow, that's not a factor.

Slipspace wrote:

That's my point. I think it's very telling nobody has really done it yet. That should tell you something.

I've never seen such a discussion in any wargames I've played, I don't think it's a huge red flag that 40k is lacking.
I think it's more a sign of what communities engage with the game about. 40k players generally aren't those seeking high tactical depth in games. They're those seeking players to play with regularly, cool models to collect, etc. Hence the largest and most recurring discussions on 40k boards are in regards to who gets what models and when.

It's almost like, theres some kind of distinction between a board game, which is designed for players to not do much prep and generally by the nature of the game presents a somewhat randomized experience to the player, and a wargame where you construct, paint, and customize your entire force that tends to lead players to want a lot of the game to revolve around pre-planning.

Im not certain but im fairly sure that were you to assign point values to chess pieces and allow the player to deploy as they like, youd remove almost all of the tactical depth from chess as you added in that strategic layer.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
The game is heavy on footslogging because players feel no need to invest in greater mobility/the price of that mobility is inefficient.

In fact I find your examples very much reinforcing the idea that 40k is not an army level game.
You talked about where to send reinforcements. If you can't send reinforcements because they're too slow, that's not a factor.

So is 40k more or less of an army level game if units can threaten most things on the board in a given turn - or if they can't?

I just think you don't see these Chess-style scenarios because they are difficult to describe (although again, we had one on page 2.)
It would be quite a bit of work to draw up a map of a 40k game at a specific point. "How would you play out your 5 turns" is a bit of a big ask.

But lets go back to GSC as they were the example. Consider "GSC Patriarchs".
Should you have one in your list? I've argued no in the past - lets break the tyranny of the Broodcoven stratagem - but yes, you probably should because its not clear what you are using the points/CP on otherwise. (Perhaps especially given multiple detachments cost CP rather than gaining them.)
If you are going to take one, how should you use him? Is he a one-way missile? Or should you hold him back to try and maximise value over the game? If you think there is no discussion to be had on this, then okay maybe 40k is a really superficial shallow game but I can't agree. I feel I've played a lot and watched a lot and its not obvious to me. (Perhaps implied - I find he's often underwhelming, hence the aim to build lists without one, but unfortunately I don't think that really works.)

Tyel wrote:

If you are going to take one, how should you use him? Is he a one-way missile? Or should you hold him back to try and maximise value over the game? If you think there is no discussion to be had on this, then okay maybe 40k is a really superficial shallow game but I can't agree. I feel I've played a lot and watched a lot and its not obvious to me. (Perhaps implied - I find he's often underwhelming, hence the aim to build lists without one, but unfortunately I don't think that really works.)

I totally agree with you on this, these are the tactics present in 40k at the minute.
The fact that you generally plan out ahead of time that you're going to use him aggressively or conservatively doesn't change the fact that it's a decision executed on the tabletop.

I do sympathise with people saying that tactics are very shallow. I'm only disagreeing with the idea that tactics are negligible or completely trivial.

 kirotheavenger wrote:

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.

Not many of those wargames cover the GW model range though, and if they were usable by 40k players they would be used. So there needs to be a new system, although maybe it's less of an issue about which particular system and moreso about who would develop and officiate such as system.

 kirotheavenger wrote:

If 40k was so easy to solve, why isn't the hardcore tournament community solving their games?

They....kinda did already. Outside the shills writing articles for GW and getting paid for it, there's not exactly a ton of variance for units being ran or anything in the actual topping lists.

Plus the true solving of games is pretty hard with GW creating rules bloat and needing errata + FAQ with literally every single release.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 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.

Sunk cost fallacy thinking. If a game with 40k's rules were released today without the strong IP to back it up, we would laugh at it. What we have instead is people defending it and GW's practices...because.

People here don't really think about that and it shows.

Nurglitch wrote:

 kirotheavenger wrote:

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.

Not many of those wargames cover the GW model range though, and if they were usable by 40k players they would be used. So there needs to be a new system, although maybe it's less of an issue about which particular system and moreso about who would develop and officiate such as system.

As you'll find from playing alternative systems, just adding in whatever your personal rules bugbear into the framework of 40k and trying to make it balanced isn't actually all that easy.

Recently, out of curiosity a friend of mine and I tried out Grimdark Future, purported to be "use your 40k minis for a game that's actually GOOD!!!!!" and we found out immediately that:

1) GDF is even MORE deadly than 40k, if you can freaking believe it

2) the army matchup between our two armies (SM Primaris and GSC) was even MORE cartoonish, with GSC units even less capable of accomplishing anything at all (you know what the problem with GEQ infantry is, it's that their guns get 2 shots in rapid fire range and that they hit on 4s - they really ought to get only one shot and hit on 5s!)

All you really need to do is head on over to the proposed rules section and pull up any person's "I've rewritten the rules for 40k, it was SO EASY, this is SO much better" post, and with the exception of Mezmorki's system, which does actually seem relatively well put together and tested, you'll immediately find half a dozen ultra-vague rules additions that would give BCB an anyeurism should GW put it out in a new edition.

There are games I would love to be able to adapt to 40k. I've been enjoying the absolute hell out of battlegroup, but the problem is, I don't know if all of 40k could ever possibly fit into the structure BG provides. Morale is an amazing thing to hinge the game on, but 40k is way too based around FEARLESS WARRIORS WADING THROUGH FIRE. And the system for attacking armored targets doesn't work either - I don't think you could ever get everything in 40k into a system where successfully penetrating a vehicle's armor destroys it.

Spoletta wrote:

 Canadian 5th wrote:

Spoletta wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
Terraforming mars is almost nothing but anticipating what my opponents are going to do and heading them off or undermining them.

If their strat is to drag the game out for other VP i can terraform like mad to undermine their strategy. I constantly watch their resources to see if they are going for chains of terraforming bonuses on the various tracks. Milestones and awards are absolutely a element of the game you actively compete and can influence other players with. I watch their energy, money, hand size, and titanium to anticipate what they might trade for in colonies. And if you ever play with turmoil the politics game adds basically an entire side game of strategy and tactics to how you can mess with your opponents.

Anyone who thinks terraforming mars is a solitaire game has no idea what they are doing when they are playing it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Not to mention the placing tiles on the board is a game in and of itself where your interactions with the other players can screw you out of vp or flat out steal it from your opponents. I am litterally blown away that you would think so little of the player to player interaction.

That is still 100% mathematically solvable though.
You can always run an alghoritm to find the "optimal choice", even when you need to interact with the opponent.

All games are mathematically solvable.

I played bridge at international level. That is a game where you need to play with the unknown factor of what your 2 opponents will do, AND the unknown factor of what your team mate will do!

And yet let me tell you that almost all of it is running percentages in your head.

Bridge has far fewer conditions on when you can and should play your cards. Terraforming Mars has a cost, possible additional requirements, a game board, rewards which often vary by game state, groups of 2 actions per round leading to complexity of when to take an action within a round, actions granted by cards, fixed cost actions , interactions between cards, an every filling track for O2 and heat which both ends the game and allows or disallows cards to be played. Bridge is checkers to this game's chess.

Having many variables doesn't make it not solvable.

There are some variables you can't realistically solve for in freeform wargaming (i.e. games played without a hexgrid or defined map) - Theres a theoretically infinite number of positional permutations based on where a model/unit is located in relation to every other model/unit, which is compounded by things like line of sight, terrain, and weapons ranges, etc. Thats not to say that it can't be solved, just that you'd need a supercomputer to do it (and depending on the game even a supercomputer might struggle to actually calculate/solve all that).

The question isn't whether a game is solved or not, it's whether it's sufficiently complex that two human beings playing the game can't mathematically solve it themselves in the time given.

This.

I think the problem with this discussion is that one side is arguing that tactics is zero.
I think this is objectively false.
Why does a move being determinably optimal mean it's not a valid decision for the player? Literally the whole point of a game is to enact what you think is the optimal play to win.

Noughts and Crosses may have minimal tactical interplay, but it's there.
40k definitely has more tactical interplay than that, I can't imagine that's actually up for the debate.
So arguing that 40k has zero tactics just seems stupid to me. I don't think 40k is the most tactically deep game on the market, far from it, but it's not a trivial solution. Otherwise, why isn't it the same list winning every tournament?
If 40k was so easy to solve, why isn't the hardcore tournament community solving their games?

Lets say "strategy" (i.e. listbuilding) accounts for 60% of the game outcome, and "logistics" (i.e. points economy) accounts for another 30%. "Tactics" (i.e. action economy) then only accounts for 10% of the games outcome. Throwing some numbers at the wall, you can solve probably about 80% of the strategic and logistical problem, and probably about 20% of the Tactical problem, which leaves things about 74% solved, or put another way about 26% of the game is unsolvable (at least within the constraints of the human mind). Basically, we can get an approximate solution but not an actual solution, and the outstanding 26% is the wiggle room that we have to work out during actual gameplay. Debates about listbuilding and points efficiency are largely intertwined and get you the most potential return, whereas the tactical discussion requires a lot of energy to discuss and has situational limitations that make it difficult to do so outside of the context of a specific game being played, and have a minimal return on investment.

You can make tactical threads about x-wing because you can limit the scenario to half a dozen models.

More importantly you can realistically limit the number of permutations due to the tightly defined maneuvers. In 40k a model has a theoretically infinite spread of potential positional endpoints it can land on within its movement range each turn. For X-Wing the number is fixed, usually around 10-20 though some special rules can increase that.

the_scotsman wrote:

There are games I would love to be able to adapt to 40k. I've been enjoying the absolute hell out of battlegroup, but the problem is, I don't know if all of 40k could ever possibly fit into the structure BG provides. Morale is an amazing thing to hinge the game on, but 40k is way too based around FEARLESS WARRIORS WADING THROUGH FIRE. And the system for attacking armored targets doesn't work either - I don't think you could ever get everything in 40k into a system where successfully penetrating a vehicle's armor destroys it.

I've been wondering the same and tend to agree if you're looking to drop in a historical ruleset. They're just not written to support sci-fi concepts like large disparities between infantry.
Dust 1947 has a system that would probably work quite well however. It's even built with power armour and such being a thing in mind.
Star Wars Legion could also work very well I feel.
And that's just two rulesets that I'm familiar with.

I've also looked at Grimdark Future. I think it's quite close to being good, but especially Primaris seem ridiculously over the top. Maybe that's just because it has a lot of mechanics similar to older editions of 40k.

Voss wrote:

 Xenomancers 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

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.

What's this nonsense? 'Melee players' (whoever that mythical group is supposed to include) didn't influence squat, let alone make this happen. GW's new default board size took everyone* by surprise and there's no rhyme or reason to it.

*almost everyone. Some of the playtest groups obviously knew and the predatory gangs like Frontline were certainly posed to sell new gaming mats early. Its certainly easier to 'fill up' the board with the handful of terrain pieces in tournaments at this size (but still doesn't really fix the Planet Bowling Ball problem). Why not blame them if you're going to randomly accuse people that aren't GW for changes to GW rules?

This group exists in every game. Go play LOL - practically no reason to play a ranged champion anymore because essentially every melee champion can jump on you from a screens length. 40k is no different now - melee units threatening a charge at the max range of your guns is common. It is not nonsense. It isn't tactical though. Getting units into melee should be a challenge - because the reward is so high. 40k gives it to you by automatic.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
We are trivializing the small amount of tactics that exist. They are so basic and amount to aim your weapons at this unit until it is dead and rinse and repeat. That is tactics to you?

Not all factions are harlequins or banana bikes.

Spoletta wrote:
Not all factions are harlequins or banana bikes.

Okay when it's not them - it's magnus with a double move - or shining spears with a double move - or ork da jump. Or whatever. Closing ground is so fething easy. There is no maneuver. 40k is plug and play - point and click. You just essentially need to know where to point the hammer and you are a top player.

Tyel wrote:

Slipspace wrote:
The fact nobody on the "40k is tactically complex" side of the argument has yet to present a scenario to analyse is quite telling, IMO. I remember about a year ago there were a series of posts on the official X-Wing forum with a snapshot of a game state with a lot of deep discussion about options for both players. They were some of the most interesting threads on that board. The absence of such things for 40k is probably an indicator of the relative tactical complexity of the two games.

There's a scenario on page 2.

Sssshh! He's hoping people forget that. Seriously, I'm surprised people are still chatting with the troll. His argument has boiled down to "If you define tactics the way I define them, then there are no tactics." and not "let's talk about the OP's subject matter". I would encourage everyone to just proceed with more scenarios, because I'll keep chatting about them for sure!

Heck, let's do another one

------------

You are planning for a tournament, and are worried about facing an Admech gunline (2 squads of Robots, 3 squads tracked troop dudes, Cawl, doggies, Termite drill w/Electropriests). Your store has a history of light terrain gaming tables, so you know that Obscuring terrain will be present, but likely just 2 pieces. You're bringing a Chaos list. Your list's claim to fame is that it has Terminators that get a near-guaranteed charge (Honour the Prince, one dice is automatically a 6), but you know this Admech force can screen with his doggies, and retreat them in response to a charge using a strat. Your other forces are mostly geared towards getting in and charging as well, so your shooting is mostly limited to a unit of Oblits, Havocs, and a Baleflamer from your Lord Discordant.


Allow yourself to have whatever secondaries and additional forces you want for the following scenarios (since it's so hard to come up with everything), and fill in the gaps where you think you need to. How do you Deep Strike your Emperor's Children Terminators this turn? What do they do? Assume Admech have taken Grind Them Down, Deploy Scramblers, and Linebreaker.

2 Scenarios;
#1 - You got the first turn. Admech dogs hid turn 1, with one squad hidden while also on an objective, and most of the rest of his army castled up on a second one. You killed 4 tracked troop dudes with your shooting turn 1. You lost two units to his firepower turn 1, but the Lord Discordant is (barely) alive, though can likely charge his lines this turn as well. If Admech stays on both objectives this turn, he'll score at least 10 points on Primary. He scored 1 turn of Grind Them Down (3), a Priest with a buff aura scrambled his deployment zone, and he did not score Linebreaker turn 1.

#2 - You got the second turn. Admech hid his dogs turn 1, with one squad hidden while also on an objective, and most of the rest of his army castled up on a second one. His second turn he moved his dogs to spread out, encircling his army as best as he could to push out your deep strike areas, and he brought in his Termite Drill with Electropriests hidden by the drill, who deployed Scramblers in your deployment zone. He killed two of your units turn 1, and another two on turn 2, leaving you without your Oblits, Havocs, or Lord Discordant. At this point, you need to get onto some more objectives as well to stop Admech scoring 15 on his turn for holding more than you. You killed 4 tracked troop dudes with your shooting turn 1. He scored Grind Them Down both turns 1 and 2, he has deployed 2 scramblers so far (his deployment zone and yours), and the Priests and Termite Drill also scored him a turn of Linebreaker.

Not Online!!! wrote:

Au contraire it could also be that my local strategical meta still is behind in some manners or that knights are really liked still.

And you haven't disputed anything other than proclaimed that you disagree.
Fine, show me the possible tactical interesting interaction on a small nu gw standard table tm with gw plates tm with no interactivity encouraged beyond sit on objective more or less because there's no weakpoint to tanks f.e. anymore so no reward for potentially exposing an AT unit to get a clear shot.

Name one change that increased tactical complexity and onfield decision making since 8th or 9th.

If your meta ( if people can even have one right now ) carries enough AT to kill knights then someone should absolutely steam roll victories with hordes without worrying about killing anything.

I can't pontificate on every individual meta. I can on 17,000+ games that do follow a notion on how 9th is played and in that standard blocking with transports is a legitimately viable scenario.

When I get a moment I'll diagram some scenarios.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Lets say "strategy" (i.e. listbuilding) accounts for 60% of the game outcome, and "logistics" (i.e. points economy) accounts for another 30%. "Tactics" (i.e. action economy) then only accounts for 10% of the games outcome. Throwing some numbers at the wall, you can solve probably about 80% of the strategic and logistical problem, and probably about 20% of the Tactical problem, which leaves things about 74% solved, or put another way about 26% of the game is unsolvable (at least within the constraints of the human mind). Basically, we can get an approximate solution but not an actual solution, and the outstanding 26% is the wiggle room that we have to work out during actual gameplay. Debates about listbuilding and points efficiency are largely intertwined and get you the most potential return, whereas the tactical discussion requires a lot of energy to discuss and has situational limitations that make it difficult to do so outside of the context of a specific game being played, and have a minimal return on investment.

This comment resonates the most with me of the comments that I've seen thus far. Thank you!

Despite starting this discussion and defending the existence of tactical choices in 40K, I DO agree with many (heck I think there might even be consensus) that table-level tactics are not the biggest (and may in fact be one of the smallest) factors in determining the outcome of a game.

But to assert that tactical choices don't exist or don't matter is absurd. If a player decided to only move directly forward towards its nearest objective and only shoot at the nearest target, they would probably lose. There isn't "that" much depth to the tactics, but there is enough room for player's to make mistakes. And while there are often obvious "solutions" to a given tactical situation, there are occasions where the right move isn't obvious and players might have a tough choice to make (super-computer aid notwithstanding).

It may be that most of the tactical decisions are relatively easy to boil down into heuristics ("rules of thumb") for tactical best practice. That's what the Goonhammer articles were all about. But I think there needs to be a commensurate recognition that most tactical decisions in any game can be similarly boiled down to heuristic rules of thumb. Tactics are routinely matters of finite problem solving (i.e. chess problems) and optimization/logistic exercises (see the vast swath of modern engine-building eurogames). Sometimes these tactics are more or less interactive, sometimes they hinge on more/less randomness. But there are similar in many respects. Also, we need to recognize that other games provide more opportunities for making different STRATEGIC choices mid-game, becaue the scope and length of the game is much longer.

So, what we might, ultimately, be getting at, is that (1) 40K is a game heavily contingent on pre-game planning and deployment (strategy); (2) that while there are tactical decisions to make in the game, (3) due to the structure of the mission, board size, game length, there are relatively limited opportunities for "changing your strategy" mid-game in ways that actually impact the result. Perhaps that's where the game's greatest weakness lies. It's not a matter of not having tactics, it is rather a matter that shifting strategies is pretty difficult.

the_scotsman wrote:
It's almost like, theres some kind of distinction between a board game, which is designed for players to not do much prep and generally by the nature of the game presents a somewhat randomized experience to the player, and a wargame where you construct, paint, and customize your entire force that tends to lead players to want a lot of the game to revolve around pre-planning.

Im not certain but im fairly sure that were you to assign point values to chess pieces and allow the player to deploy as they like, youd remove almost all of the tactical depth from chess as you added in that strategic layer.

My friends and I actually did this and it's true. We didn't change deployment, but we assigned a value to each piece so that we could determine a winner when time didn't allow us to get all the way to checkmate. And you're right, it 100% changes the nature of the game- even without altering deployment.

But what I really like about this post is that it acknowledges the thing that keeps discussions in this forum adversarial; we each want different things out of the game. When I hear the AA Bolt Action, or hardcore strategy folks talk about how their ideas would improve 40k... The game they propose would bore me to tears, yet paradoxically force me to to focus on the table to the exclusion of everything else in the room because it would be "My Turn" every one or two minutes. But then when it was my turn, it would also only be my turn for one or two minutes- I'd feel like I was constantly doing something, but nothing I was constantly doing would be impactful enough to satisfy me. I'd HATE it.

Just like when I post on forums, I'd rather spend 20 minutes writing a lengthy post full of detail, and get responses of the same calibre than spread that 20 minutes out over 20 snippy one line posts that solicit nothing but one liners in response. It's a different set of preferences- neither approach is objectively right or wrong, they're just different. This is why I've thought Twitter was garbage since it's inception.

And people who like the AA, all tactics style of game cannot understand my point of view anymore than I can understand theirs. We want different things from the game- there is no way it can make both of us happy. I feel like what I want out of the game is more in tune with the game GW wants to make, because some of the things other people most want to change are things that have been with us since the very beginning; again, that doesn't make me "right" and all these other people "wrong." But I do think people who want this game to be AA are setting themselves up for disappointment, because the 34 year old Empire that is Warhammer 40k was established based on IGOUGO game play and it has continued for all 34 years of the game's existence. If Apocalypse had sold more copies than the 8th ed BRB, GW might have thought about changing. It didn't. They won't.

And don't get me wrong- I'm not saying I wouldn't enjoy an occasional game of Bolt Action- I'm a gamer; I probably would. But it would never come close to replacing 40k, and I doubt it would ever become a regular habit. Just like Full Throttle, Legions of Steel, Inferno and Battletech were all fun for an afternoon, but could never come anywhere near replacing what I get out of 40k.

My favourite video games are Koei Dynasty Warrior/ Samurai Warrior titles. They don't have a lot of tactical depth either, but I've never found a videogame franchise I like anywhere near as much. Like 40k, there are a dozen different versions of each title, and I like some more than others. If you tried to bring a greater level of tactics to those games, you'd kill what I like about them.

Everyone that I know that's played Apocalpyse believes it's a better ruleset for 40k than 40k's is.

I admit you're the first person I've heard say they like the fact they can walk away from the table for twenty minutes without missing anything. To me that's a horrific sin.
I can see the appeal if 40k is just an excuse to hang out with friends, but it leaves me wondering why have the game at all.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
Everyone that I know that's played Apocalpyse believes it's a better ruleset for 40k than 40k's is.

I admit you're the first person I've heard say they like the fact they can walk away from the table for twenty minutes without missing anything. To me that's a horrific sin.
I can see the appeal if 40k is just an excuse to hang out with friends, but it leaves me wondering why have the game at all.

It is also massively stripped down. Activating a knight in 40K a bit different than activating a knight in Apoc.

Tactics (noun) -
the art of disposing armed forces in order of battle and of organizing operations, especially during contact with an enemy.

(Decent source here)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_tactics

Sure - you could claim a lot of moves you make in a turn are utilizing some of these maneuvers. However, when rapid dominance and force concentration are the only things that matter and basically always win. Is it safe to say at that point that the game has no "tactics" but it has a singular tactic?

Actual war has a temporal factor and a human factor that this game can't even come close to replicating. It starts you in an immediate pitched battle to the death in a box you can't escape from. Your options are essentially kill or be killed.

How much patrolling are you going to do? Or feigning retreat?

Shoot and scoot? Sure. The game allows me to do that with no penalty.

Decoy...okay...I'll give you that one. I actually do this a lot in game. Realistically though - it is just a suicide mission / kamikaze attack (which is mostly a pre game design).

 kirotheavenger wrote:
Everyone that I know that's played Apocalpyse believes it's a better ruleset for 40k than 40k's is.

I admit you're the first person I've heard say they like the fact they can walk away from the table for twenty minutes without missing anything. To me that's a horrific sin.
I can see the appeal if 40k is just an excuse to hang out with friends, but it leaves me wondering why have the game at all.

The complaints I've gotten about apoc are basically that it removes the micro-rules that make you feel like your dudes are 'your dudes.' Which is a legitimate complaint: people like 40k because it's huge and sprawling and expansive, allowing you to customize your force and make little micro decisions.

it's the "DnD" of wargames. DnD is a huge sprawling crazy gigantic imbalanced mess, and a hyper stripped down game system like PBTA or Fates is invariably way more balanced because there's vastly fewer options.

But some people like the options and can forgive the lack of blaance to get them.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
Everyone that I know that's played Apocalpyse believes it's a better ruleset for 40k than 40k's is.

I admit you're the first person I've heard say they like the fact they can walk away from the table for twenty minutes without missing anything. To me that's a horrific sin.
I can see the appeal if 40k is just an excuse to hang out with friends, but it leaves me wondering why have the game at all.

It has more to do with how much I get to do on my turn than enjoying the down time. Resolving the actions of a single unit just isn't enough for me. I like moving/ shooting/ fighting with my whole army enough that I'm willing to wait for my opponent to do that too.

These discussions come up all the time. The comparison I always use is the difference between American football and Soccer; in the later, action is back and forth, back and forth, back and forth all freakin game and part way in, I'm getting whiplash from swinging from one end of the field to the other. In the former, you get 4 downs so you can build a drive.

Again, neither is right or wrong- they're just different styles of game.

I can see the appeal of AA; I just don't prefer it. I don't get to do enough with each of the turns I have to make them feel important. I feel like I'm constantly being interrupted.

I usually leave these threads once it becomes obvious that no one on the other side is willing to say they see the appeal of intra-unit coordination which is not possible to the same degree in AA. They could do what I do and say "I say the appeal, but still prefer what I prefer." But they don't. They tend to insist that only their point of view has any merit whatsoever, despite the fact that the the world's most popular tabletop miniatures game has disagreed for 34 years and managed to become and remain the world's most popular tabletop game despite the IGOUGO system.

PenitentJake wrote:

 kirotheavenger wrote:
Everyone that I know that's played Apocalpyse believes it's a better ruleset for 40k than 40k's is.

I admit you're the first person I've heard say they like the fact they can walk away from the table for twenty minutes without missing anything. To me that's a horrific sin.
I can see the appeal if 40k is just an excuse to hang out with friends, but it leaves me wondering why have the game at all.

It has more to do with how much I get to do on my turn than enjoying the down time. Resolving the actions of a single unit just isn't enough for me. I like moving/ shooting/ fighting with my whole army enough that I'm willing to wait for my opponent to do that too.

These discussions come up all the time. The comparison I always use is the difference between American football and Soccer; in the later, action is back and forth, back and forth, back and forth all freakin game and part way in, I'm getting whiplash from swinging from one end of the field to the other. In the former, you get 4 downs so you can build a drive.

Again, neither is right or wrong- they're just different styles of game.

I can see the appeal of AA; I just don't prefer it. I don't get to do enough with each of the turns I have to make them feel important. I feel like I'm constantly being interrupted.

I usually leave these threads once it becomes obvious that no one on the other side is willing to say they see the appeal of intra-unit coordination which is not possible to the same degree in AA. They could do what I do and say "I say the appeal, but still prefer what I prefer." But they don't. They tend to insist that only their point of view has any merit whatsoever, despite the fact that the the world's most popular tabletop miniatures game has disagreed for 34 years and managed to become and remain the world's most popular tabletop game despite the IGOUGO system.

Your football comparison sucks since the defense can actually do something actively. Have you actually ever watched a game or just assumed defense sat there twiddling their thumbs waiting for offense to do everything?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also you don't like you're interrupted? AKA you don't like your opponent is allowed to counter you? Great defense for IGOUGO, champ.

I think Blood Bowl is a fantastic example of intra-unit coordination in a IGOUGO system.

That said, I very much agree with the point that instead of complaining about 40k we should be thinking about what it does right. I mean, the opportunity to walk away from the table during an opponent's turn is fantastic for rubber-necking at tournaments, and seems to contribute to facilitating social interaction around the table. Like a hub, the table organizes the social interaction around it.

I think one of the things it does really well is appealing to a wide variety of goals and interests, and being good enough to do a bunch of things at once. I think the list-building is critical because it keeps it at the forefront of many players' minds, while the painting and modeling complement that activity while not being dependent on it.

PenitentJake wrote:
I usually leave these threads once it becomes obvious that no one on the other side is willing to say they see the appeal of intra-unit coordination which is not possible to the same degree in AA. They could do what I do and say "I say the appeal, but still prefer what I prefer." But they don't. They tend to insist that only their point of view has any merit whatsoever, despite the fact that the the world's most popular tabletop miniatures game has disagreed for 34 years and managed to become and remain the world's most popular tabletop game despite the IGOUGO system.

I participated in bigger thread here recently and was trying to make this exact point, which is that AA-systems run the risk of tipping the game too much towards a tactical back-and-forth, and making the game more about optimal activation sequence, and you lose sight of the big sweeping army-wide movement opportunities.

I think the opportunity to KEEP the big sweeping move opportunities but have a bit more dynamic is to focus more on a reaction-type system. Players take their turn in the normal IGOUGO fashion, but there are opportunities to perform reaction moves (that in turn affect your own options when your own turn rolls around). Classic 40K had "Go to Ground." We've built on this with ProHammer to add reactive fire to the game (with various tradeoffs involved in the decision) a couple of different charge reactions, better overwatch (true overwatch). All of this still IGOUGO, but it makes turs a little bit more interactive and engaging for non-active player, but still lets the active player do their big sweeping maneuvers.

 Mezmorki wrote:


I think the opportunity to KEEP the big sweeping move opportunities but have a bit more dynamic is to focus more on a reaction-type system. Players take their turn in the normal IGOUGO fashion, but there are opportunities to perform reaction moves (that in turn affect your own options when your own turn rolls around). Classic 40K had "Go to Ground." We've built on this with ProHammer to add reactive fire to the game (with various tradeoffs involved in the decision) a couple of different charge reactions, better overwatch (true overwatch). All of this still IGOUGO, but it makes turs a little bit more interactive and engaging for non-active player, but still lets the active player do their big sweeping maneuvers.

This is a very good point, and many AA players have pointed out that there are different types and levels of AA. Kill Team, for example, is a bit of a hybrid as movement is IGOUGO, but it still has activations for shooting, etc. So I'm sure it is possible to strike a balance; personally, the only thing about the game in its current state that I find sub-par is the imbalance between model ranges, and that may end up being addressed by the end of the edition for all we know.

And Slayer, while I probably should ignore you, since the obvious (and unnecessarily) hostile tone of your post implies that it will be futile to do otherwise, I'll give it a shot for the sake of diplomacy. Yes, I have watched football, and yes I understand that there is a defense. I even understand that for some football fans, defensive stars are their actual heroes, even if the vast majority of fans seem to place more importance on those who play offense.

Surely though, you can feel the difference in rhythm between the two games, which is the actual point I'm making. And while I don't have many friends that are soccer fans, I do have a great many who are hockey fans (I'm Canadian, so go figure). I get into this debate with all of them too- they fail to understand how a long-cycle, slow rhythm provides a different type of satisfaction than constant back and forth engagement.

And if you want to get technical, there is a defensive component in 40k as well; you have to roll saves, you can deny my psychic powers and you get to fight in hand to hand. You can also use some reaction strats- overwatch, various cancel actions, etc. In fact in some Tau builds, there are still ways to get more than one unit to overwatch per turn. And sure, none of these defensive activities are as involved as what the active player is doing, but they are there. And you may notice, I've never said the "argument sucks" to any of the AA advocates who choose to ignore this; nor have I felt inclined to ask any of them if they've ever seen a game of 40k.

But that's because I try to understand and respond to the points they are making rather than nit-pick the semantics. To be fair, there have been a handful of times where I've suggested that aligning semantics may facilitate a smoother discussion, but it's rare that I have to because most people here are fairly articulate, even when I happen to disagree with them, and I usually get the point they are making, even when I feel the point has been imperfectly made.

Don't know you guys, but during the opponent's turn I don't take my eyes off the table for even a second. I'm too busy studying my next turn and adjusting it after each one of my opponent's moves and roll outcomes.

I'm not entirely wedded to an absolute AA system.
Although I will say that I find Kill Team or Aeronautica's system absolutely horrendous, worst system I've encountered lol.

I do appreciate the sense of inter-unit tactics that you can play with IgoUgo better than AA. Although it has to be said, a lot of AA systems have some ability to activate multiple units at once.
It's the waiting in between turns for literally up to an *hour* with no ability to do anything, at all, which kills me in 40k.
I'm one of those people that stands up when I'm excited and engaged. If I sit down I'm bored and uninterested in the game. I spend ~half my 40k time sat down.

As examples of games and activation systems;
Band of Brothers: uses an AA system where armies get a maximum and minimum number of units they can activate in a turn. So the Germans might be able to activate between 4 and 6 units, whereas the more flexible 101st AB might be able to activate 3-7 units.
There's still the opportunity to 'combo' multiple units at once, but no one has to wait long for a turn. Additionally there's 'overwatch' reaction fire.
Necromunda: has a system where your leaders can activate multiple fighters at a time, again allowing 'combos'. (Although it has to be said this is rarely a good option in favour of activating more units after your opponent).
Blood Bowl: turns just aren't that long so no one's waiting for more than 2-4 minutes at a time, on top of that a bad roll can swing the play sequence at any moment.

Battlegroup: is IgoUgo but there's lots of opportunity to interrupt a player with fire or movement.

I'll also say that 40k is popular for many reasons, fun and engaging tactical gameplay just isn't one of those reasons.