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 Daedalus81 wrote:



Additionally, there is no "VIP" mission in 40K that emulates what chess is. Imagine if you had to play a game where the winner was determined by who kills the opponent's VIP. No deepstrike within 12" of the VIP. The VIP cannot be targeted past 12".

How do you think that would change how people approach their list and the game?

Wouldn't that just turn w40k in to warmachine, but with a worse rule set? The game would devolve in to super turn 1 alfa strikes with only mitigation being chaff or stuff like primaris anti deep strike guy, if the game would be over if the warlord died. Would give huge edge to armies like harlequins that can ignore terrain and have huge movment.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
[Y]ou can sit back and let loose with withering firepower while cackling like a maniac...

You can't if you want to win a 9e game versus a skilled opponent, or if you're against Harlequins, Daemons, or DA who saw your list and decided they're just going to hold one objective all game for the easy win. This isn't 8e anymore.

[A]ny number of combinations you can conceive.

Yes, but only a fraction of the forces you can build are actually any good at winning the game. A slightly larger fraction might be 'fun' but what's fun to one player is tedious to others.

Additionally, there is no "VIP" mission in 40K that emulates what chess is. Imagine if you had to play a game where the winner was determined by who kills the opponent's VIP. No deepstrike within 12" of the VIP. The VIP cannot be targeted past 12".

How do you think that would change how people approach their list and the game?

That sounds like Warmahordes but with a stupid rule tacked on like a bandage because 40k is so hyper lethal and prone to alpha strikes that this hypothetical doesn't work without both the bodyguard rule and a nonsensical 12" range targeting restriction.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Additionally, there is no "VIP" mission in 40K that emulates what chess is. Imagine if you had to play a game where the winner was determined by who kills the opponent's VIP. No deepstrike within 12" of the VIP. The VIP cannot be targeted past 12".

How do you think that would change how people approach their list and the game?

Oh, it gets better. Not only is there a VIP, but it is generally the slowest and weakest Character available to the army.

Oddly enough, Tau used to have something like this with their Ethereals. It wasn't game-ending, but it could hurt if it happened at the wrong time. Which is why Ethereals were rarely seen on the tabletop.

Klickor wrote:
After my turn the optimal choices for the opponent is many times clearly visible to both of us and he will if capable execute those moves. There really isn't any baiting or deep tactics to turn the game around later. You have to start scoring ASAP and if you don't you lose. Which forces early engagement and dictates what the players have to do. You don't really need a super computer to calculate the most optimal way to make your turn because the game will be decided in 1-3 turns so you don't need to account for anything after that. You play against the game state and not really the player. You could quite easily swap between multiple opponents of the same skill level each turn and your game wouldn't really change anything compared to having one player. Just get them 5min to learn to board state.

Great explanation, but I think this is a difference of opinion. I believe if you performed this experiment, you will find that each of the 3 players will do things differently, because the answers as to the best action in any particular game state will vary based on each player's skill level.

 Yarium wrote:

Klickor wrote:
You could quite easily swap between multiple opponents of the same skill level each turn and your game wouldn't really change anything compared to having one player.

Great explanation, but I think this is a difference of opinion. I believe if you performed this experiment, you will find that each of the 3 players will do things differently, because the answers as to the best action in any particular game state will vary based on each player's skill level.

You might want to read the post you quoted again champ...

Yarium wrote:
Great explanation, but I think this is a difference of opinion. I believe if you performed this experiment, you will find that each of the 3 players will do things differently, because the answers as to the best action in any particular game state will vary based on each player's skill level.

After deployment it wouldn't be much different on who did the turns after as long as they are all quite competent. Some slight variation at most on turn 1 or 2 but from turn 3 to turn 5 the games would probably be exactly the same.

Daedalus81 wrote:
40K gives probably the most choice out of any tabletop game on how you want to approach it. Either you can sit back and let loose with withering firepower while cackling like a maniac or deploy a raiding force to try and control the field or any number of combinations you can conceive

Yes and no. You can build your force in many different ways but many of those only lead to loss and suffering already in the list building stage. When on the table you are very limited in what you can do without losing. The mission design forces you to play a certain way.

Haven't uploaded an image before so might not work. But trying to show an extreme example of how little choice a player might have for a whole game.

In the mission Sweep and Clear a Dark Angels list could hold only the one objective in his quarter, very far from the other player, and the middle one and score 85 out of 90 points without killing a single enemy model or do more movement than a single move turn 1. You cant really score any killing objectives against such a DA list and even if you score 15pts a turn on the primary you still need to score at least 40pts on secondaries without taking any killing secondaries or the mission specific secondary. Maybe you can get 15 on assassinate but they are protected by 15-25 terminators in the middle so to get those you still need to wipe all those out so you cant try to ignore them and score anyway.

Lets say you play an army without fast and hard hitting units that can skirt around the battle field in to the middle of the opponents deployment zone and remove 5-10 inner circle terminators that may have cover before the game ends. Then your only option no matter the rest of your list, no matter the turn and no matter what the dark angel player really does is pour everything into that middle objective and hope you can kill all those inner circle terminators with character support before he scores enough to win. Any decision you make that isn't that is a false decision that will lead to a loss. You can try and "flank" or conserve firepower for later or hold units back in reserve or try any other "tactic" but that is just you fooling yourself that you have options. If the DA player gets first turn especially the way the whole game is played is more or less already decided for both players. If some of the terrain isnt very thought out like in my picture some armies really are mostly doomed in trying to clear the backfield objective. Reserving some units isnt enough since if you do the DA player dont just leave that 5 man unit there alone but put either a 10 man unit there, put a 10man unit a bit away to screen out that board edge while holding the upper left objective or use some of their characters or speeders or what ever to screen that out turn 2 and 3. Non flying transports/non infantry units would have to spend quite the time going around all the terrain and the 20 or so terminators in the middle so probably wont be able to get back there and kill them before turn 5.

I have seen a local DA player play exactly this kind of list. 30 or so terminators, a few support characters and 2 RW landspeeders. Besides fluke dice rolls the games are not more interesting or deep than tic-tac-toe.

Most other games with other armies aren't so clear cut and there might seem to be more tactics available but most of the time its just an illusion of choice rather than an actual choice. I used the above example just because it is so extreme that there barely is even an illusion of choice.

The more casual the 40k game is and the worse the armies and players are there might seem to exist more tactics but that is only because the players dont really understand how to win the game and make more mistakes allowing "deeper tactics" to work.

Before they made the new BA supplement I played a type of super aggressive board control list. Most games just came down to if I thought I should commit at deployment or not. If I did my deployment choices + the missions almost played the game for both me and my opponent for us. Sometimes I even told my opponents what their best actions would be to speed it up a bit since I knew they would come to the same conclusion anyway but they just werent used to the situation as I were and would need an extra 10-15 min to figure it out.

Klickor wrote:

Spoiler:

Yarium wrote:
Great explanation, but I think this is a difference of opinion. I believe if you performed this experiment, you will find that each of the 3 players will do things differently, because the answers as to the best action in any particular game state will vary based on each player's skill level.

After deployment it wouldn't be much different on who did the turns after as long as they are all quite competent. Some slight variation at most on turn 1 or 2 but from turn 3 to turn 5 the games would probably be exactly the same.

Daedalus81 wrote:
40K gives probably the most choice out of any tabletop game on how you want to approach it. Either you can sit back and let loose with withering firepower while cackling like a maniac or deploy a raiding force to try and control the field or any number of combinations you can conceive

Yes and no. You can build your force in many different ways but many of those only lead to loss and suffering already in the list building stage. When on the table you are very limited in what you can do without losing. The mission design forces you to play a certain way.

Haven't uploaded an image before so might not work. But trying to show an extreme example of how little choice a player might have for a whole game.

In the mission Sweep and Clear a Dark Angels list could hold only the one objective in his quarter, very far from the other player, and the middle one and score 85 out of 90 points without killing a single enemy model or do more movement than a single move turn 1. You cant really score any killing objectives against such a DA list and even if you score 15pts a turn on the primary you still need to score at least 40pts on secondaries without taking any killing secondaries or the mission specific secondary. Maybe you can get 15 on assassinate but they are protected by 15-25 terminators in the middle so to get those you still need to wipe all those out so you cant try to ignore them and score anyway.

Lets say you play an army without fast and hard hitting units that can skirt around the battle field in to the middle of the opponents deployment zone and remove 5-10 inner circle terminators that may have cover before the game ends. Then your only option no matter the rest of your list, no matter the turn and no matter what the dark angel player really does is pour everything into that middle objective and hope you can kill all those inner circle terminators with character support before he scores enough to win. Any decision you make that isn't that is a false decision that will lead to a loss. You can try and "flank" or conserve firepower for later or hold units back in reserve or try any other "tactic" but that is just you fooling yourself that you have options. If the DA player gets first turn especially the way the whole game is played is more or less already decided for both players. If some of the terrain isnt very thought out like in my picture some armies really are mostly doomed in trying to clear the backfield objective. Reserving some units isnt enough since if you do the DA player dont just leave that 5 man unit there alone but put either a 10 man unit there, put a 10man unit a bit away to screen out that board edge while holding the upper left objective or use some of their characters or speeders or what ever to screen that out turn 2 and 3. Non flying transports/non infantry units would have to spend quite the time going around all the terrain and the 20 or so terminators in the middle so probably wont be able to get back there and kill them before turn 5.

I have seen a local DA player play exactly this kind of list. 30 or so terminators, a few support characters and 2 RW landspeeders. Besides fluke dice rolls the games are not more interesting or deep than tic-tac-toe.

Most other games with other armies aren't so clear cut and there might seem to be more tactics available but most of the time its just an illusion of choice rather than an actual choice. I used the above example just because it is so extreme that there barely is even an illusion of choice.

The more casual the 40k game is and the worse the armies and players are there might seem to exist more tactics but that is only because the players dont really understand how to win the game and make more mistakes allowing "deeper tactics" to work.

Before they made the new BA supplement I played a type of super aggressive board control list. Most games just came down to if I thought I should commit at deployment or not. If I did my deployment choices + the missions almost played the game for both me and my opponent for us. Sometimes I even told my opponents what their best actions would be to speed it up a bit since I knew they would come to the same conclusion anyway but they just werent used to the situation as I were and would need an extra 10-15 min to figure it out.

It's curious that you bring up this list, since I have seen it played literally yesterday.
Guess what happened? The DA player went first and was forced to concede because the opponent didn't charge into the middle for turns one and two. Obviously it was much more convoluted that this short description, and the DA opponent was simply more experienced.

Spoletta 796555 11078187 wrote:

It's curious that you bring up this list, since I have seen it played literally yesterday.
Guess what happened? The DA player went first and was forced to concede because the opponent didn't charge into the middle for turns one and two. Obviously it was much more convoluted that this short description, and the DA opponent was simply more experienced.

What did he play against, and not asking this for some argument of the only this army can do it kind. Ijust want to know what army can skip turn 1-2 when going second in 9th.

Spoletta wrote:

Klickor wrote:

Spoiler:

Yarium wrote:
Great explanation, but I think this is a difference of opinion. I believe if you performed this experiment, you will find that each of the 3 players will do things differently, because the answers as to the best action in any particular game state will vary based on each player's skill level.

After deployment it wouldn't be much different on who did the turns after as long as they are all quite competent. Some slight variation at most on turn 1 or 2 but from turn 3 to turn 5 the games would probably be exactly the same.

Daedalus81 wrote:
40K gives probably the most choice out of any tabletop game on how you want to approach it. Either you can sit back and let loose with withering firepower while cackling like a maniac or deploy a raiding force to try and control the field or any number of combinations you can conceive

Yes and no. You can build your force in many different ways but many of those only lead to loss and suffering already in the list building stage. When on the table you are very limited in what you can do without losing. The mission design forces you to play a certain way.

Haven't uploaded an image before so might not work. But trying to show an extreme example of how little choice a player might have for a whole game.

In the mission Sweep and Clear a Dark Angels list could hold only the one objective in his quarter, very far from the other player, and the middle one and score 85 out of 90 points without killing a single enemy model or do more movement than a single move turn 1. You cant really score any killing objectives against such a DA list and even if you score 15pts a turn on the primary you still need to score at least 40pts on secondaries without taking any killing secondaries or the mission specific secondary. Maybe you can get 15 on assassinate but they are protected by 15-25 terminators in the middle so to get those you still need to wipe all those out so you cant try to ignore them and score anyway.

Lets say you play an army without fast and hard hitting units that can skirt around the battle field in to the middle of the opponents deployment zone and remove 5-10 inner circle terminators that may have cover before the game ends. Then your only option no matter the rest of your list, no matter the turn and no matter what the dark angel player really does is pour everything into that middle objective and hope you can kill all those inner circle terminators with character support before he scores enough to win. Any decision you make that isn't that is a false decision that will lead to a loss. You can try and "flank" or conserve firepower for later or hold units back in reserve or try any other "tactic" but that is just you fooling yourself that you have options. If the DA player gets first turn especially the way the whole game is played is more or less already decided for both players. If some of the terrain isnt very thought out like in my picture some armies really are mostly doomed in trying to clear the backfield objective. Reserving some units isnt enough since if you do the DA player dont just leave that 5 man unit there alone but put either a 10 man unit there, put a 10man unit a bit away to screen out that board edge while holding the upper left objective or use some of their characters or speeders or what ever to screen that out turn 2 and 3. Non flying transports/non infantry units would have to spend quite the time going around all the terrain and the 20 or so terminators in the middle so probably wont be able to get back there and kill them before turn 5.

I have seen a local DA player play exactly this kind of list. 30 or so terminators, a few support characters and 2 RW landspeeders. Besides fluke dice rolls the games are not more interesting or deep than tic-tac-toe.

Most other games with other armies aren't so clear cut and there might seem to be more tactics available but most of the time its just an illusion of choice rather than an actual choice. I used the above example just because it is so extreme that there barely is even an illusion of choice.

The more casual the 40k game is and the worse the armies and players are there might seem to exist more tactics but that is only because the players dont really understand how to win the game and make more mistakes allowing "deeper tactics" to work.

Before they made the new BA supplement I played a type of super aggressive board control list. Most games just came down to if I thought I should commit at deployment or not. If I did my deployment choices + the missions almost played the game for both me and my opponent for us. Sometimes I even told my opponents what their best actions would be to speed it up a bit since I knew they would come to the same conclusion anyway but they just werent used to the situation as I were and would need an extra 10-15 min to figure it out.

It's curious that you bring up this list, since I have seen it played literally yesterday.
Guess what happened? The DA player went first and was forced to concede because the opponent didn't charge into the middle for turns one and two. Obviously it was much more convoluted that this short description, and the DA opponent was simply more experienced.

That doesn't really tell me anything at all. I just set up a certain scenario in which their basically were no options to make a point for CERTAIN lists. If you change it you will of course get different outcomes. Doesn't mean the games had more tactics available or that the "flowchart" wouldn't be almost as simple. Could be or maybe it wasn't, I don't know. It is not like you have to charge in there turn 1 or turn 2, especially if you are a shooty list. But then it just becomes shoot in there turn 1 and 2 and then mop up before he scores enough to win the game. The opponent still had to do certain things that probably was quite obvious to a competent player.

Like my Blood Angels would actually have some more choices and ways to handle a DA death wing list on that mission than the games I have seen my friends play. But I have great movement, pre move/deploy and units capable of shifting a unit of backfield terminators as early as turn 1 or turn 2. So the DA player probably wouldn't chose that DA secondary to keep it or he would have to commit much more to guard it making the center weaker. It would be a very different game and the reason I stipulated armies/lists that don't have that capability. Those who don't have that capability just don't have much if any choice in how to win the game. Exactly how they do it depends on their list of course but there isn't much if any tactics to it.

In certain scenarios the game will as deep as tic-tac-toe. Sometimes it will look like it is chess being played but underneath it is still mostly tic-tac-toe if you paus and think about it.

But that is kind of a the norm for bad armies, those that are realy bad have two problems. First is weaker rules, and the other is that their best stuff is often not even on the level of the avarge stuff of other armies. And this turns games very formuleic. A bit like like chess, where you know the game is going to end in in 12 moves, with the difference being that with w40k you still have to play it through.

Klickor wrote:

Spoletta wrote:

Klickor wrote:

Spoiler:

Yarium wrote:
Great explanation, but I think this is a difference of opinion. I believe if you performed this experiment, you will find that each of the 3 players will do things differently, because the answers as to the best action in any particular game state will vary based on each player's skill level.

After deployment it wouldn't be much different on who did the turns after as long as they are all quite competent. Some slight variation at most on turn 1 or 2 but from turn 3 to turn 5 the games would probably be exactly the same.

Daedalus81 wrote:
40K gives probably the most choice out of any tabletop game on how you want to approach it. Either you can sit back and let loose with withering firepower while cackling like a maniac or deploy a raiding force to try and control the field or any number of combinations you can conceive

Yes and no. You can build your force in many different ways but many of those only lead to loss and suffering already in the list building stage. When on the table you are very limited in what you can do without losing. The mission design forces you to play a certain way.

Haven't uploaded an image before so might not work. But trying to show an extreme example of how little choice a player might have for a whole game.

In the mission Sweep and Clear a Dark Angels list could hold only the one objective in his quarter, very far from the other player, and the middle one and score 85 out of 90 points without killing a single enemy model or do more movement than a single move turn 1. You cant really score any killing objectives against such a DA list and even if you score 15pts a turn on the primary you still need to score at least 40pts on secondaries without taking any killing secondaries or the mission specific secondary. Maybe you can get 15 on assassinate but they are protected by 15-25 terminators in the middle so to get those you still need to wipe all those out so you cant try to ignore them and score anyway.

Lets say you play an army without fast and hard hitting units that can skirt around the battle field in to the middle of the opponents deployment zone and remove 5-10 inner circle terminators that may have cover before the game ends. Then your only option no matter the rest of your list, no matter the turn and no matter what the dark angel player really does is pour everything into that middle objective and hope you can kill all those inner circle terminators with character support before he scores enough to win. Any decision you make that isn't that is a false decision that will lead to a loss. You can try and "flank" or conserve firepower for later or hold units back in reserve or try any other "tactic" but that is just you fooling yourself that you have options. If the DA player gets first turn especially the way the whole game is played is more or less already decided for both players. If some of the terrain isnt very thought out like in my picture some armies really are mostly doomed in trying to clear the backfield objective. Reserving some units isnt enough since if you do the DA player dont just leave that 5 man unit there alone but put either a 10 man unit there, put a 10man unit a bit away to screen out that board edge while holding the upper left objective or use some of their characters or speeders or what ever to screen that out turn 2 and 3. Non flying transports/non infantry units would have to spend quite the time going around all the terrain and the 20 or so terminators in the middle so probably wont be able to get back there and kill them before turn 5.

I have seen a local DA player play exactly this kind of list. 30 or so terminators, a few support characters and 2 RW landspeeders. Besides fluke dice rolls the games are not more interesting or deep than tic-tac-toe.

Most other games with other armies aren't so clear cut and there might seem to be more tactics available but most of the time its just an illusion of choice rather than an actual choice. I used the above example just because it is so extreme that there barely is even an illusion of choice.

The more casual the 40k game is and the worse the armies and players are there might seem to exist more tactics but that is only because the players dont really understand how to win the game and make more mistakes allowing "deeper tactics" to work.

Before they made the new BA supplement I played a type of super aggressive board control list. Most games just came down to if I thought I should commit at deployment or not. If I did my deployment choices + the missions almost played the game for both me and my opponent for us. Sometimes I even told my opponents what their best actions would be to speed it up a bit since I knew they would come to the same conclusion anyway but they just werent used to the situation as I were and would need an extra 10-15 min to figure it out.

It's curious that you bring up this list, since I have seen it played literally yesterday.
Guess what happened? The DA player went first and was forced to concede because the opponent didn't charge into the middle for turns one and two. Obviously it was much more convoluted that this short description, and the DA opponent was simply more experienced.

That doesn't really tell me anything at all. I just set up a certain scenario in which their basically were no options to make a point for CERTAIN lists. If you change it you will of course get different outcomes. Doesn't mean the games had more tactics available or that the "flowchart" wouldn't be almost as simple. Could be or maybe it wasn't, I don't know. It is not like you have to charge in there turn 1 or turn 2, especially if you are a shooty list. But then it just becomes shoot in there turn 1 and 2 and then mop up before he scores enough to win the game. The opponent still had to do certain things that probably was quite obvious to a competent player.

Like my Blood Angels would actually have some more choices and ways to handle a DA death wing list on that mission than the games I have seen my friends play. But I have great movement, pre move/deploy and units capable of shifting a unit of backfield terminators as early as turn 1 or turn 2. So the DA player probably wouldn't chose that DA secondary to keep it or he would have to commit much more to guard it making the center weaker. It would be a very different game and the reason I stipulated armies/lists that don't have that capability. Those who don't have that capability just don't have much if any choice in how to win the game. Exactly how they do it depends on their list of course but there isn't much if any tactics to it.

In certain scenarios the game will as deep as tic-tac-toe. Sometimes it will look like it is chess being played but underneath it is still mostly tic-tac-toe if you paus and think about it.

In that case the other opponent was another DA, but with a mixed battalion of greenwing/deathwing/ravenwing, which offered him more play choices.

Sure, if your point was that if a one trick pony army meets another one trick pony army then you can pretty much guess what is going to happen... well you are right, I've got no reason to argue that.

That's why armies in 9th are tipically very versatile and generalist units are preferred to specialsts.

Even in a list which sort of conspires to remove in-game choice I think they exist.

For example, how many terminators do you leave at the bottom left? What is the *optimal* answer from opposing list to opposing list? If that flank does get crushed by say turn 2, do you just say "bad dice, good game" or do you change your later turns?

Now eventually yes, you'll have played your list against a range of other competitive lists to the point where you have some feeling of where the balancing point is. But if you'd never played the list before, I'm not convinced it is obvious.

Ofc there are choices but most choices are just bad and shouldn't be taken. The game is just too constrained by the missions/core rules with 5 turns and the binary way to handle things to let you give meaningful choices. You mostly rush to the objectives and point your gun at the optimal targets.

Most people make lots of mistakes when playing which makes it look like there were tactical decisions that really decided the game. If you gave each player just a little reminder list, maybe with some calculations for choosing targets already made as
well, andd a few extra minutes for each phase you could easily remove most of those misplays that gave the Illusion of choice.

The game is quite complex with a ton of special rules you easily forget and misremember. Those are often what drives the players actions. Very rarely do you see a player do an actual move, that isn't someone doing a bad play and just trying something cute because it's a real life tactic, after deployment that changes how you respond to things. They can't suddenly refuse a flank and move their tanks over to the other side to make a flanking maneuver. There isn't enough game turns to waste away doing something like that. They can't choose to just suppress or pin down a unit and focus fire somewhere else and try to handle that problematic unit another way later on. Such actions don't even exist. We can't use debuffs or morale to influence the opponent. It's a very binary kill or not kill and that is usually a very easy choice to see what is the best target in any given situation. At most you can run in some cheap chaff and hope it stalls the opposing unit for a bit but that is often not so easy due to the lethality and movement of the stronger stuff. They can often kill anything cheap they get charged by or fall back and charge something else in their turn or if you try to block their movement they can often just fly around or use pile ins and consolidation to even gain movement if not just making up for any lost movement.

This is why having an optimal list is so important and to know all the million rules so well. The game lacks depth so you often don't play the opponent as much as you use your best unit the most efficient way while minimising your own mistakes.

There is very little "risks" when doing things in 40k when playing well. Unless you roll very poorly you don't really fail and have to have back up plans or change the tactics midway or between turns. After you have deployed the course is mostly set and you just plow forward.

Blood Bowl on the other hand is very different in this regard. First you must plan for the inevitable failure and depending on where in a turn a player failed the other player's next turn could be drastically different completely changing both players plans and actions for the rest of the game. On a random snake eyes you could have to change your entire game plan for the next 14 turns when your star player stumples and breaks his ankle when the opponent tackles him. Instead of playing a passing game you might go for a caging game instead. The game, unless getting bashed in to the mud, can be tacticaly deep and there are often more than just one optimal path to victory that can change in response to player and game actions.

And to your example of a flank getting crushed and saying GG. If I had poor rolls and aren't playing a very mobile army the game is probably over at that point. Depending on what kind of game it is we might just call it and set up a new game or if it is a tournament I will try to get as many points as possible still but the game might already be decided. There really isn't any way to come back most games due to good decision making. The mission system stops that. Insane dice rolling can ofc decide a game that should have been decided already but that isn't really anything you as a player can do anything about.

I left the thread alone and watched it for 4 days to see what kind of "tactics" would get discussed that people wanted to discuss.

As it turns out, everyone stopped discussing anything until Klickor came in to say he saw my point.

You think you have lots of viable good choices and that there are lots of deep tactical decisions to make...

Okay. Discuss them? Where are they?

 Lance845 wrote:
I left the thread alone and watched it for 4 days to see what kind of "tactics" would get discussed that people wanted to discuss.

As it turns out, everyone stopped discussing anything until Klickor came in to say he saw my point.

You think you have lots of viable good choices and that there are lots of deep tactical decisions to make...

Okay. Discuss them? Where are they?

You know, after the discussion pretty much arrived to the conclusion that 40k is a shallow as chess, we hadn't much more to add.

By the way, you want tactical discussions? Please tell me what you think of the following game https://www.reddit.com/r/Tyranids/comments/m1udem/tyranids_vs_new_death_guard_9th_edition_battle/

I'm not being provocative, just curious. I consider that an example of a good 40k match, where the game was decided pretty much by the players.

Note that the better list also got first turn, and in the end lost.

I agree on that the game was decided by the players. Most games are. I didn't see much tactical depth though. Most of what I read look like the Death Guard player did mistakes and got punished for it.

Like his large terminator unit did absolutely nothing for turn 1-3.... Got his PBC killed by smites turn 1....

If you are playing 2000 Vs 1580 for 3 turns I would say that it isn't surprising that the Tyranid player won.

 Lance845 wrote:
Okay. Discuss them? Where are they?

Considering "your" (both of you) stance is since it's IGOUGO, the other player has no input on your actions although he is the one creating the table state you're given, there is nothing to discuss, obviously.


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Klickor wrote:

Blood Bowl on the other hand is very different in this regard. First you must plan for the inevitable failure and depending on where in a turn a player failed the other player's next turn could be drastically different completely changing both players plans and actions for the rest of the game. On a random snake eyes you could have to change your entire game plan for the next 14 turns when your star player stumples and breaks his ankle when the opponent tackles him. Instead of playing a passing game you might go for a caging game instead. The game, unless getting bashed in to the mud, can be tacticaly deep and there are often more than just one optimal path to victory that can change in response to player and game actions.

If your team isn't set up to play anything else than "bash skulls", no, you can't really redefine your plan. You might pick up the ball sooner than you intended for example but it isn't really a redefining move.
Just as in 40K if your army is monolithic, you can only do one thing and it's why army building is important (on top of having more choices and being less restrained in your choices than when you build a BB team, which implies more chances to make mistakes during this stage). Not because you only have to pick the good stuff, move it forward and then win. You need certain tools and employ them correctly, just as in a game of BB and you definitely can tip your army towards certain "pathways of victory" if you want to. You can build an army that relies on brawling in the middle, one that relies on board control, another on firepower and speed, whatever. And depending on what tools you picked or not, you might be able to switch from one or another at some point. But there is nothing "automatic" about that in both games.

Klickor wrote:
I agree on that the game was decided by the players. Most games are. I didn't see much tactical depth though. Most of what I read look like the Death Guard player did mistakes and got punished for it.

Like his large terminator unit did absolutely nothing for turn 1-3.... Got his PBC killed by smites turn 1....

If you are playing 2000 Vs 1580 for 3 turns I would say that it isn't surprising that the Tyranid player won.

Having a smite hit for 9 MW isn't something you plan for, but is the kind of thing that you have to react to.
Same thing that happened on the other side, with one of the hyerodules being hardly crippled by a couple of lucky shots.

There was also no mistake in how he played those terminators.

So for the DA example, you are playing Harlequins, with a standard sort of list of starweaver mounted troupes and bikes. What if they were to respond like this? Bike squads go and tag the top left and bottom right objectives. Starweavers shoot across the centre.



In their turn 2 everything is going to consolidate on those 5-10 terminators in the bottom left.

So what do you do? Are you just going to bunker down on the centre and see how the dice go? What's the proof that this is the optimal response?

This might not be the optimal play from the Harlequins either - but feel free to point that out.

Are harlequins even a fair example of playing vs any army? They have practicaly no common played bad match ups and have positive win rates vs everything from horde to elite armies. Of course they can blow up every bunker, with practicaly no counter. Even on tables without terrain they would be favoured.

Too much work to discuss that but everything changes if you have a mobile army. Which is WHY in my example I excluded those. So why you then use Harlequins as a counter argument blows my mind. I tried to show as an extreme example as possible to remove any of all thsoe decisions to show the faults with the system.

Since I now have 150 guardsmen in my deployment zone and you were kind enough to expose your Harlequin list I guess I win? I can also completely change the armies in the example on a whim now.

Klickor wrote:
Too much work to discuss that but everything changes if you have a mobile army. Which is WHY in my example I excluded those. So why you then use Harlequins as a counter argument blows my mind. I tried to show as an extreme example as possible to remove any of all thsoe decisions to show the faults with the system.

Since I now have 150 guardsmen in my deployment zone and you were kind enough to expose your Harlequin list I guess I win? I can also completely change the armies in the example on a whim now.

Well.. okay, but what's an example of a such an immobile army that functions at the higher levels of the game?

I guess if a DA army of 30~ Terminators runs into a DG army of 30~ Terminators, you are probably on for a brawl over the middle objective and the dice will see who wins - but even then I think there is some interactions worth thinking about.

There will still be some decision making ofc in any game. There are always lots of small more mechanics that need to be done correctly as well. Like spacing, screening, cover, line of sight etc.

I wasn't just thinking top tier armies but armies overall that can field slow lists. But yeah, other DA or DG could really become a slog that even if decided by the player who makes the best decisions it would still not be much tactical depth in them and they would be very straightforward most of the time.

My argument is that 40k is very shallow due to the nature of the missions, the core rules and the small table size. Those things dictate more your actions than what your opponent is doing does. Still some tactics but it just isn't much. The Harlequins that were brought up aren't much more tactical but their rules and the board states they make sure do make the game look way deeper than what DA Vs DG does. But only on the surface.

Don’t forget limited number of turns driving choices, reducing them in many cases to those which are necessary and mostly obvious, and those not useful.

Anyways Klickor, I had just gotten my exalt button fixed after Lance set it on fire, and here you go making me break it again! You are on fire with the analysis.

 jeff white wrote:
Don’t forget limited number of turns driving choices, reducing them in many cases to those which are necessary and mostly obvious, and those not useful.

Anyways Klickor, I had just gotten my exalt button fixed after Lance set it on fire, and here you go making me break it again! You are on fire with the analysis.

In what game where you're trying to win, do you make moves that aren't necessary/useful ?

The word you're looking for might be "decisive" instead. And yeah, the game being "short" means you have to get results faster and can't setup something for 5 turns down the line.
Doesn't means much though, as long as there enough decisive moves available.

Ofc you try to make meaningful choices in all games but the time limit and the way the game works with scoring and killing changes what kind of decisions you can make. In many games you can set up moves for rewards later on and not focus as much on the current turn. In 40k "tactics" often comes down to "how do I score as much as possible this turn and kill as much of the opponent while doing so?". What you will actually do 1 or 2 turns later doesn't matter much compared to what you do NOW!

This limits any possible tactical depth. The decisions are still very important from turn to turn but each decision is usually very simple and short sighted, limited in scope.

Klickor wrote:
Ofc you try to make meaningful choices in all games but the time limit and the way the game works with scoring and killing changes what kind of decisions you can make. In many games you can set up moves for rewards later on and not focus as much on the current turn. In 40k "tactics" often comes down to "how do I score as much as possible this turn and kill as much of the opponent while doing so?". What you will actually do 1 or 2 turns later doesn't matter much compared to what you do NOW!

This limits any possible tactical depth. The decisions are still very important from turn to turn but each decision is usually very simple and short sighted, limited in scope.

I dunno, if you just move your stuff forward to get the points you can right now, you'll often start your next turn with a much smaller army. All a smaller number of turns does is force you to do as much as you can in a single turn. Doesn't mean you then have to reduce your scope to only "score and kill stuff" and if you can't do much more, I'm not sure it's always the game's fault as a ruleset (while a bit hard to judge since it's also incomplete at the moment, lacking updated rules for 16 or so factions).

Anyway, sure a game of 40K is short (in terms of opportunities). Deployment and the first turn are all about setup for every following turn though (with being able to correct at least parts of deployment during your 1st turn) and the 4 other turns are a bit more "shallow" I guess, since you're supposed to (or have to) commit more to whatever you decided (some armies can change plans more easily than others) and thus also offer less room for mistakes. Talking about turns is also a bit misleading since you have means to "lengthen" your turn if I may, like moving multiple times during a round, a few units can shoot/fight multiple times too, etc. All those allows for more than just "hey, i gotta sit on this marker and kill a bit of stuff, now".

But yes, it limits on purpose what plans you can make and I believe we didn't get the objective game we got by chance. We already got missions settings where we had more liberty regarding how we were going to win and it lead to alpha strikes/over reliance on lethality and last turn scoring for example which weren't fun if you trust community feed back. Could it be "more tactical" or "have more depth" though ? Yes, probably.

So yeah, you probably can't manoeuvre to expose your tactical genius into a perfect turn you would start with a "and now I win" (even though nothing really stops this possibility). I just think it's a bit reductive to say you mostly don't really care about other turns than the one you're in now, particularly if it's supposed to be a symptom of the game being short. If it's short, you should be planning how to achieve what you want in the set amount of turns you're given instead of whenever your opponents makes a mistake or when you eventually manage to create the situation you were looking for (which are possible and valid strategies in longer games, like BB since you mentioned it). It's mainly just faster paced and for good reasons imho. I guess what I mean is you can be reductive of any kind of game, "it's not meaningful, you just wait for X to happen" or "it's not meaningful you have to be focused on doing this" are the same kind of thought. In the end, it's just different.

For those claiming that 40k has tactics let's look at this write-up by the blokes over at Goonhammer:

https://www.goonhammer.com/competitive-innovations-incursion-special-objective-secured-first-blood/

The basic battle plan here is fairly obvious. On Incursions smaller tables, two full Warrior bricks can dominate a huge proportion of it...

Large, durable infantry blocks are more likely to overwhelm the opponent’s tools in Incursion, and the same is true of big monsters...

As all these lists are showing, linear, proactive strategies to overwhelm the enemy are better than ever in Incursion.

[W]e see the tools from the Eternal Expansionist build used to construct an even more extreme version of the plan from the Warrior list – overwhelm the enemy. Here, with their pre-game move, ObSec and either built-in or Chronomancered invulns, the Canoptek elements here can slam into the opponent’s army pretty much straight out of the gate, and potentially cut them off from being able to achieve anything much at all all game.

Thanks to For the Greater Good, try and charge one and there’s a good chance all of them will be unloading, and if you don’t engage with them then they’ll gradually rack up chip damage over the course of the game...

I get that these are 1,000 point skew lists but you know with certainty what each list needs to do to win. There is one correct way to play these lists and if you can do it, due to dice or running into a bad match-up there's not much you can do to salvage the game.

Klickor wrote:
Ofc you try to make meaningful choices in all games but the time limit and the way the game works with scoring and killing changes what kind of decisions you can make. In many games you can set up moves for rewards later on and not focus as much on the current turn. In 40k "tactics" often comes down to "how do I score as much as possible this turn and kill as much of the opponent while doing so?". What you will actually do 1 or 2 turns later doesn't matter much compared to what you do NOW!

This limits any possible tactical depth. The decisions are still very important from turn to turn but each decision is usually very simple and short sighted, limited in scope.

Sorry man, your previous posts were interesting and made for good discussion, but this one is just wrong.

Like, 100% wrong.

In 40K you play your turn thinking one or 2 turns ahead. What happens during this turn doesn't really matter a lot, you may end up with almost zero points scored and no enemy units killed, but setting up a very good next turn.
You always have a general plan of how much you will score at the end of the game and how much he will score, and try to follow that as much as possible.
Thinking turn by turn in 9th just means being bad.

Spoletta wrote:

Klickor wrote:
Ofc you try to make meaningful choices in all games but the time limit and the way the game works with scoring and killing changes what kind of decisions you can make. In many games you can set up moves for rewards later on and not focus as much on the current turn. In 40k "tactics" often comes down to "how do I score as much as possible this turn and kill as much of the opponent while doing so?". What you will actually do 1 or 2 turns later doesn't matter much compared to what you do NOW!

This limits any possible tactical depth. The decisions are still very important from turn to turn but each decision is usually very simple and short sighted, limited in scope.

Sorry man, your previous posts were interesting and made for good discussion, but this one is just wrong.

Like, 100% wrong.

In 40K you play your turn thinking one or 2 turns ahead. What happens during this turn doesn't really matter a lot, you may end up with almost zero points scored and no enemy units killed, but setting up a very good next turn.
You always have a general plan of how much you will score at the end of the game and how much he will score, and try to follow that as much as possible.
Thinking turn by turn in 9th just means being bad.

You don't really NEED to think ahead though. You know what your opponent brought. You already know whats in reserves. It isn't rocket science, let alone high school science.