How do you remember/use all the rules?

[Xenith]

Hi all,

 

Basically the title - how do you maximise the memory and use of rules within the game, or to be more specific, the very faction specific things like stratagems, of which there are now hundreds.

 

Do you commit everything to memory, make your own flash cards, or use things like phone photos, keep the codex open, the GW app, or the official datacards?

 

I'm looking at speeding up my games, and rule/stratagem searching definitely takes up time. I dont make the time in my personal life to read and re-read the codex like I used to in my teens, so havent commited the whole thing to memory. 

 

Before I go and spend £25 on the Blood Angels and Space Marine datacards, what are the creative ways in which you help yourself to remember to use all the rules and tools available to you in-game?

 

Thanks for any input!

 

Xen

[MARK0SIAN]

I make a specific sheet for each unit that has its stats and any stratagems that are specific to that unit or are used a lot by that unit on it.

 

It takes time and you can’t fit every strat on so occasionally you still miss stuff but the most commonly used info is right there.

[Dark Shepherd]

The cards help for me. I leave wargear strats in the listbuilding time

 

My advice would be take out the strats you cant or wont use. Between marine and wolves strats theres 16 I might actually use plus a couple of core strats. Thats a small deck to flick through every so often plus 2 or 3 litanies

[Halandaar]

Yeah unfortunately I just don't remember a lot of stuff, I have to rely on cards, either the official Datacards where I own them or a homemade deck if I don't. But I echo what Dark Shepherd has said about removing stuff you own't use; I strip out all the cards that aren't relevant to that game (because I'm not taking the unit they apply to or similar) and that makes what you're left with a lot easier to think about. I also like to leave cards next to units when they're active as a visual cue that something is in effect, whether that's a psychic power or similar.

 

I'm also thinking about making myself some little tokens to remind me about one-off buffs that are in effect (like "choose a unit and they get this bonus until your next turn"), and maybe even something similar to AoS Warscroll cards, so every unit in my army in a given game has it's own little cheat sheet with all the rules and stratagems that could apply to it on there.

[Karhedron]

If anyone hits on a perfect mnemonic, please let me know as I end up kicking myself after at least half my games for forgetting rule X.

[Xenith]

Ok, so the official cards seem the way to go - I was considering photographing the relevent strats and making an A4 cheat sheet then just printing it out or leaving my phone on the table with all the photos, but that takes up space, more than a deck of cards...but it's a lot cheaper. Being able to put the powers near the units is also a help. I was looking for quick, cheap ways to recall the info, but I might just have to bite the bullet and get the cards. 

[Marshal Loss]

The official datacards are great & worth the money, imo.

 

For things like stratagems though you can speed the rote learning process up by creating a "cheat sheet" as you suggested above (or find one floating around the internet): just make an A4 document listing which of your army's stratagems can be used in which phase of the game, there's no need to cram it full of information beyond that. It'll help reinforce when abilities should be used which will naturally prompt recall, stopping you from leafing through a pile of c. 30+ cards constantly.

[Dark Shepherd]

If youre playing a game, especially with new table sizes, theres nothing stopping you from laying out some/all of your cards at your table edge.

 

Id do it it in order of what phase they can be played in (or when flicking through them). Phase activation tends to be what catches me out eg Wisdom of the Ancients

[Marshal Loss]

Having a smaller list with e.g. activation order of stratagems listed is generally going to be much less distracting and will take up far less space than lining up cards around a table, especially for those armies like SM with dozens of viable stratagems one might realistically call upon in a game. Same logic applies in education, it's best not to oversaturate - keeps your eyes in one place

Edited February 26, 2021 by Marshal Loss

[battle captain corpus]

The data cards etc are a huge boon for sure. I generally play with everything to hand, codex, main rule book and notepad pen etc to. I’ll also spend a bit of time in my opponents turn getting stuff ready my side so it’s quicker. But it depends on the game etc. 
 

BCC

[Kenzaburo]

I'm still looking for a way to minimize stuff I have to find a place for on my table side. In the past I've used pictures of my battlescribe list for each unit on an iPad mini - basically my private dataslate. But with strats and stuff, I need to improve on that. 

 

I'Ve spent a lot of time early last year to improve my D&D campaign with digital tools (MS OneNote was a huge boost). I'm sure there's some similar clever way for Units and strats. If I can reduce clutter to just needing my iPad, dice and measuring tape, that'd be perfect. :)

[Rogue]

I've gone with the list of stratagems on an A4 sheet approach. They're listed by phase (including pre-game and anytime).

 

If I feel like putting in the effort, I sometimes print a version with any stratagems unavailable to that particular force removed (no point in listing an aberrant specific stratagem if I don't have any aberrants, for example).

 

But using the cards is good too, as is adding certain stratagems to individual data-sheets.

[andes]

Back in The World That Was, when we were playing, I found the cards to be very helpful... but it wasn't unusual for me to realize (sometimes days later  ) that one of the more obscure strats would have been very useful to play at a certain point in a game. I've come to terms with this and have resigned myself to inevitably forgetting stuff. At this point, I'm happy if I manage to just remember the stats of my weapons. 

[Helias_Tancred]

I have a Mentat on my payroll ;) ... he accompanies me to all games. 

lol seriously though I've thought of making cards to remind me of things.

[Schurge]

If you are hesitant about spending money on data cards just write them down on paper. A lot of the people I play with right now do that.

 

I just lug the books around with the stratagems bookmarked. I still forget them a lot though because they are spread across 3 books. If I were to play in a tournament or for a prize I'd make cards and at the beginning of each phase I'd put the ones that are relevant up top to keep them prominent in my mind.

 

As for the rest of the rules I just play games. Eventually you don't need to look stuff up anymore.

[Emurian]

Regarding stratagems. In general I notice only a handfull are usefull in every matchup. Thus its easy to learn the main 5 stratagems while flipping through the book in your opponent turn to have a refresher for the situational ones you might be able to use.

When it comes to statlines as per codex, I learn them out of my head, all of them, including point upgrades. 

Yes the space marine codex might have near 100 data sheets but you do not need to learn all of them at once. Just learn 5 at a time, when using said units. If you played 3 games with intercessors then you most likely know their statline by then. A lot of stats are generic allround for an army with just some minor tweaks (primaris mark X vs Gravis, T4 W2 vs T5 W3 for example) its not to hard to learn these.  

It is also the reason why I refuse to use anything like battlescribe, as these tools make you lazy. I want to be able to make lists in my head, write them down, do one doublecheck if I included a unit that I don't use on a regular basis and thats it. Its also kinda hard while working to whip out a codex and stare at it, so initially when learning a new army I wrote down the pts cost of 10-15 units and then make lists like that. (dont tell my boss)

I know 95% of the stats / rules of all the units I use on a regular basis. The double checks I do in general are often just to prevent me ''cheating'' but more often then not its just that I want the confirmation that what I have in my head is right (which is) rather then needing to check them because I have 0 clue what they are doing.

 

[Chaeron]

Just to echo the sentiments of many above, creating index cards as a mini ‘cheat-sheet’ for myself is great for referencing in a pinch. With certain combinations, I’ll put down ‘remember that it means you have X attacks that do Y’, so it’s really obvious and means that I don’t forget the implications of an action. Breaking it down for the card and explaining for my own reference of how a mechanism or rule works is in itself helpful to learn, let alone the convenience of being able to refer back!

[Valkyrion]

If you've played the game through numerous editions, then 444414183+ marine statline is likely embedded so deep in your brain you forget that they have 2 wounds now.

 

But, to be honest, I find stratagems a good idea that is poorly implemented. I'd prefer it if there was an orders phase, a bit like in Apocalypse, where you issue your stratagems. That way there is a dedicated phase in which to do it and you're less likely to forget that your Intercessors could've fired twice.

 

Alas, it is not the case, so it's no good pining over what ifs, so now I don't play games bigger than Incursion, or if I do then it's Apocalypse which is a great system, IMO, if a little bland. 

[N1SB]

I solve the issue of Rules Management in the same way I deal with most of my problems:

 

I have a very trusted friend who's more knowledgeable than I am on the subject, who breaks it all down to fit my limited mental RAM.

 

Because it's not about mental hard drive space; we can all remember more than that if motivated enough.  But to practice having all the rules accessible in our heads to pull out immediately...there's more to life than that (by which I obviously mean the converting and painting aspects of The Hobby).

 

Then I do write it on my own flash cards that I keep with my miniatures in case I'm playing in the shop when he's not around to remind me.  Fun fact: that Warcry AoS game does almost exactly what I do, and I love it.

 

The only actual trick (that this friend figured out for me) is, rather than designing an army 1st then trying to remember all the rules, I 1st know my limited capacity for rules then design an army around that limitation instead.  So I see a Netlist that requires a number of Stratagems and HQ buffs, my friend will just be like "that's exactly the type of stuff you won't remember, and if you don't remember to use it, it's useless, so here's a simpler army list instead."  In other words...

 

I have a Mentat on my payroll ... he accompanies me to all games. 

 

...I'm fortunate enough to have a Mentat, and I don't even bother paying him.

[Syrakul]

I transcribe the unit cards with special rules into docs, then print in PDFs. All my chaos stuff is still valid and just needs tweaks with rules updates. For my thousand sons I made an elaborate magnetized spells chart to adjust and keep track of spells used by all my psykers.

 

another good tip is make a chart with headings for all the phases of the game (command, movement etc. also helps to have second set for YOUR/ENEMY phase)

put the rules and strats your army has at its disposal in the heading/phase where it can be used. then in that phase you look down and realize " AH! i can use THAT strat now!

Edited February 28, 2021 by Syrakul

[Emicus]

I'm in the Codex + Datacards camp. I try to keep my army simple with few unit types and remove cards I can't use.

 

Flowcharts for actions, PDFs, excel spreadsheets sound like optimizing the game to a level where the computer plays for you, all you do is move the pieces.

[Syrakul]

I'm in the Codex + Datacards camp. I try to keep my army simple with few unit types and remove cards I can't use.

 

Flowcharts for actions, PDFs, excel spreadsheets sound like optimizing the game to a level where the computer plays for you, all you do is move the pieces.

I'm not rolling virtual dice or anything, but I hate, absolutely hate, second guessing myself about rules and forgetting and looking up every stat all the time. I don't play enough to memorize all those details.

Also they way strats are all plopped out in the codex is a horrible way to find the one you need in the game. Not wasting time looking all that up makes playing the game feel like playing the game, not flipping around in books.

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

The app is very helpful .

[tangoalphatwo]

I don’t. I’m constantly forgetting special rules and strategums and the like. But I only play with my two sons and one friend that I have to bribe to play with. And none of them actually know the rules... So it’s all good

[mughi3]

The key is just repetitive learning. i play a host of different mini games and i have people ask me from time to time how i just know things like how marines are T4 and hit on 3+ (i still play 5th ed regularly) after 20 years you just automatically track it. 

 

I am  not to say that we all don't forget a rule or mix up editions from time to time, but that's what rule book are for if there is a question.

 

 

when it comes to stratagems specifically, well i don't play 9th and that's one of the reasons, they are equally bad as the formation spam that killed 7th in my book but i understand why it would be a problem given how many have been released now. 

 

Best bet-know the ones you use regularly, ask to see the card/rules if somebody springs one on you that you don't know.