Is it the list, or the general?

[Paulochromis]

Hi guys,

 

I'm a chess player, and one of the things you learn early is that life is too short to learn from your own personal experience.

Read books, beg, borrow and/or steal as much know-how as you can from better (I'm carefully avoiding any discussion of how long they've been playing) players. Watch good players. Especially one's whose army lists/style/ethos match your own.

Playtest, practice, analyse (or Cale-yse).

Become addicted to B&C, learn the tactica by heart, ... (oops, may have gone a little overboard)

 

Back to chess - I've lost track of the times I've been asked to play a "pick-up game" and the game is effectively over after 10 moves, but instead of resigning my opponent keeps playing, and after an hour or so's play he has spent 90% of the time playing a completely lost position. I would encourage new players in friendly games (with good opponents and/or against mentors) to simply give up and try again. Why spend an hour or so (that's what 1500pts takes) struggling after completely mis-deploying. You need to get your openings right, or at least sound enough to survive to the middlegame.

W40K is similar in that initial deployment is VERY important. You don't need to be world-class optimal, but rookie mistakes will cost you, you'll spend the whole (probably short) game defending, which most armies are NOT set up for.

 

If you can find a mentor, practice deployment, WITHOUT proceding to far into the game.

After 1 or two turns, see what's happening, how's LOS shaping up, did your opponent drop pod in behind you, ...

 

Cheers, Paul.

[Reinholt]

A couple of additional points I thought of...

 

One:

 

The idea being developed by Cale and Paul with the Thousand Sons example and meaningful practice is key. You cannot judge from a single incident, and likewise, a broad base of knowledge is extremely important. Reading everything one can on strategy, observing the actions and results that others experience, learning from other kinds of games and real-life strategic situations, and so on will have a huge impact on how you play games. One must always remain flexible and open to new information while, at the same time, developing coherent strategic frameworks to understand what is going on.

 

Then practice, practice, practice. It's one thing to discuss making a decision with a bunch of friends over a drink, and quite another to make the right ones in the middle of a heated game with victory on the line.

 

Two:

 

Sometimes I see things said here that immediately strike me as very wrong, but I can't really put my finger on it. Something Paul said in the previous post (unless someone post-jacks me while I'm writing this) did that to me last night, and it was this:

 

You need to get your openings right, or at least sound enough to survive to the middlegame. W40K is similar in that initial deployment is VERY important.

 

Yes and no. "Right" here is very different than chess. I've played a lot of very good chess players in 40k, and I pretty consistently beat them savagely when we play. 40k is an incredibly flexible game, where deception, misdirection, and rapid changes in board are extremely possible and where, in my opinion, static armies that rely heavily on initial deployment are at a catastrophically large disadvantage unless you are playing on a very large board with no terrain.

 

This is not to rag on chess players overall - there are actually some very good 40k players who are also good at chess (Paul may well be one of them, so watch out!), but that is to say the way you play chess versus the way you play 40k can be very, very different, and those used to linear incremental games can often be tricked or exploited when they bring those tactics to bear. It's a classic sort of incremental trench warfare vs. highly mobile maneuver warfare disparity. There are simply options in 40k that do not exist in chess, and are extremely disruptive to static strategies (I suggest anyone playing 40k read up on things like Boyd's OODA loop).

 

I would go the other way - you should play a force where your initial deployment is almost totally irrelevant whenever possible. What do I mean by this? Play a force that can maneuver well enough that you can cause rapid changes in the tactical and strategic environment, and press your oponent ruthlessly wherever you desire. For example, my marine army is composed 100% of units which are in transports, wearing jump packs, on bikes, fast vehicles, or able to deep strike. I am notorious in our gaming group for deploying in one way and having changed the entire board within a single turn through rapid redeployment.

 

The point I am really thrusting for about generalship here is this: make sure you get the strategic picture as well as the tactical one (this is a different aspect of the "throwing out the thousand sons after one game" example raised earlier, which is thinking a one-time tactical mistake is actually a long-term strategic flaw). Unlike chess, where the incremental one-move nature disallows for paradigm shifts (you cannot swap from one meta-strategy to another in a single move fluidly through the course of the game on demand), you can do this in 40k if you have a rapid moving force. Skill is often a matter of options; maximizing your choices so that your opponent cannot effectively see your strategy while giving you the greatest ability to find a spot to drive the knife home matters.

 

Three:

 

To tie this all back into luck, what I am trying to say is fundamentally this - you want to maximize your options, make sure you play in a way that gives you as many opportunities to win as possible, and minimize your downside. If you find yourself consistently (or even inconsistently) being undone by luck, I am suggesting the problem is not, in fact, luck, but rather that you are utilizing a strategy which allows yourself to be undone by anything other than the most extreme circumstances.

 

Can you be SO unlucky as to lose games because of it? Clearly.

 

Should you start re-thinking your playstyle if this happens to you more than once in about fifty games? In my opinion, yes.

 

My threshold of "certainty" is < 2% failure rate. Call it the mathematician in me, but I want to know that less than 1 time in 50 will I be undone before I consider it a done deal (and even then, consider the downside). Almost nothing in 40k reaches this threshold on its own... always have a plan in mind for total success, partial success, partial failure, and total failure for each move.

 

So from an over-arching sense, this is why I think list and skill matter so much more than luck. You can minimize luck with both your list and skill, not in the sense that it doesn't happen, but in the sense that barring extreme circumstances, when it does happen, you are already ready for it. Protect your downside and fish for upside; you are much more likely to undo yourself with the wrong plan that doesn't account for these things, or the wrong list that fails to allow you to do so in the first place...

[Brother Tual]

Some nice developments here - interesting points -

 

Sometimes, experience is a bad teacher. Unusual events or instances of particularly extreme luck--which one would identify as obvious outliers were they just bothering to analyze things properly--tend to convince those who rely on experience that some unit is either significantly better or significantly worse than it really is.

Knowing the mathhammer of a unit and the difference this to its avergae perfomance and what it can potentially do are two different things - one needs to be lucky to get the best results - I will agree 100% here - Attacking in this manner is an act of desperation - (firing missile launchers at monoliths) Applying averages though to get the best results (a destroyer) is not a matter of luck - sure you could miss - Fire three and they all miss - sure - unlucky - but it wont happen all the time - you will never ever kill a monolith with a missile and rarely achieve any result on it (immobilised)

 

Shooting a missle launcher at a russ - I have done it - because all of my other AT was exhausted and there was nothing beyond a guardsmen in cover to shoot at - I weapon destroyed it - that doesnt mean that I now take missile launchers because they CAN neuter a russ - I have experienced good results on outlying chance - I have experienced luck against very good odds - All that my experience means is that I dont rely on math hammer - I hardly ever consider it in game - I look at what can happen - what does happen - and what needs to happen - and then apply my army in a manner that I believe will achieve the desired results - Hopefully keeping the play in the area of what needs to happen and what does happen - you know you are loosing when you start to act in a manner of what CAN happen -

 

 

Back to chess - I've lost track of the times I've been asked to play a "pick-up game" and the game is effectively over after 10 moves, but instead of resigning my opponent keeps playing, and after an hour or so's play he has spent 90% of the time playing a completely lost position. I would encourage new players in friendly games (with good opponents and/or against mentors) to simply give up and try again. Why spend an hour or so (that's what 1500pts takes) struggling after completely mis-deploying. You need to get your openings right, or at least sound enough to survive to the middlegame.

W40K is similar in that initial deployment is VERY important. You don't need to be world-class optimal, but rookie mistakes will cost you, you'll spend the whole (probably short) game defending, which most armies are NOT set up for.

 

 

Someone posted something similar to this before - I see its worth but I dont agree that it is the best way to learn - Whilst your choice of opponent will make this stronger (as you said) but learning to defend has merit in itself - you will hardly ever have a strong enough army that can attack en-mass all game - Sure - tabling someone is an example of this - but to table an good player in a tournament is something that I find un-achievable - It just doesnt happen - Struggling after the second turn - fighting a defence - My armies are defensive - Most good players deploy very well - attacking from the onset will sometimes get you punished - learning to defend - for me - is learning not to loose - which is half way (or crawling before you walk) to learning to win -

 

Reinholt - Redeployment through speed is somewhat problematic in 5th ed - or so I find - The game is short enough as it is - complete re-deployment costs me one of my 5 turns - partial redeployment - (shifting) is a better option - or so I believe - as it doesnt cost you a turn - it is still set from deployment - you cant break your deployment completely -

 

I am suggesting the problem is not, in fact, luck, but rather that you are utilizing a strategy which allows yourself to be undone by anything other than the most extreme circumstances.

Unit position counters being undone - with a good postion you dont need luck at all - If you are beyond the enemy - then even 6's wont help them - (lascannons cant see my land raider - only plasma cannons - or something like that) even if I roll ones to hit the unit infront of me - the target cannot hope to harm me - and the things that can are out of range or LOS - thats extreme - it hardly happens in this extreme - but postition moves the average of what does happen into a could happen outlier - or the other way around -

 

So from an over-arching sense, this is why I think list and skill matter so much more than luck. You can minimize luck with both your list and skill, not in the sense that it doesn't happen, but in the sense that barring extreme circumstances, when it does happen, you are already ready for it. Protect your downside and fish for upside; you are much more likely to undo yourself with the wrong plan that doesn't account for these things, or the wrong list that fails to allow you to do so in the first place...

Agreed -