Warhammer 40k Roundup: Other Guns and Stuff

From Jack

In a recent article, my father gave his summary of our recent Warhammer 40,000 gaming, and the takeaways about the game that he derived from it. I agree about some of his points, and disagree on others. Now, obviously, neither one of us is an expert or veteran player (in particular, I think I'm the worst player in my group), so these insights are probably going to nearly all be some combination of wrong and obvious. 

To restate what was covered in the prior article:

     There are four of us who play. I settled on the forces of Chaos as my army pretty early, but whether I favor Daemons or Chaos Marines remains uncertain, and I plan on playing the Sisters of Battle as a secondary army once they're finished. Dad plays all Imperial forces, but mostly the Guard and the Mechanicus. Sam plays T'au and Thousand Sons (he's the lore player in our group). Nick still hasn't settled on an army, but mostly favors the Tyranids, and, to a lesser extent, the Necron so far.

     We've been playing for less than a year. We use tokens and chits to mark models that we don't yet have. We cycled through various armies and builds early while trying to find what suited us. We use a variety of terrain and missions, put probably still aren't quite playing "normal" games. We were never exposed to editions prior to 8th, but have vague information about their rules.

Now, my points:

Places where I agree with my father

Board control matters

...but not for the reasons he listed. In a game with objectives, and especially a game with tactical objectives, being able to seize a portion of the board quickly, or prevent your opponent from doing so, can decide the game. Leaving 10 cultists with a heavy stubber way in the back field in case they need to advance on an objective, or sticking 5 flayed ones in deepstrike in case you suddenly need a unit in the opponent's deployment zone, is key. Preventing deepstrike and reacting to enemy assault is also nice, but not as important as scoring.

Strength is everything

The way the math works out, every possible strength or toughness value is totally different S3, S4, and S5 are all totally different values, and they're not even close to the disparity between S7, S8, and S9. Lasguns and boltguns may be the same against a gorkanaut for some strange reason, but they're radically different against yer comm'n boyz. Similarly, S9 is one of the most valuable things you can get. Higher is always better. Get as much strength as you can.

Places where I disagree with my father

Real world tactics don't win

Early on, my instincts were to treat this like a real war, where ordinary infantry in a combined arms assault win nearly every engagement, while special assets are off doing special things. But this ain't a real war. Tactical marines serve a purpose, but they are incapable of finishing the enemy off. A balance of real-world forces is often effective, but sometimes a mix of disposable swarms and magic super-weapons is much better. The effective thing to do is always to maximize your number and proportion of really good super-tactics, regardless of how this would look in real life.

Cool and good go together

One of my favorite things about Warhammer is that they really do bring fluff and crunch into line, at least in 8th. Sure, there are some things that should be better than they are, like Necron Monoliths or Heralds of Tzeentch, and some things that are better than they should be, like Ogryn, but overall, things that are cool in lore are cool on the tabletop, and vice versa. Assault terminators? Daemon princes? Avatars of Khaine? Onager Dunecrawlers? All awesome in fluff and in crunch.

My own points

Probability is on your side

One of the beauties of the 40K rules is that they're highly dependent on very random rolling, but you roll so many individual dice that averages usually prevail. This is good, because it means that there's minimal variation in overall effectiveness, so your 30 boyz or your wedge of guard tanks should have similar performance every game; but there's also room for cool swings of fortune, like your Space Marine Captain surviving a daemon prince's charge and killing him in the ensuing duel. You can have cinematically random moments in your otherwise standard game. Most of the time, anyway. Also, this breaks down in certain situations, such as very small games, or games featuring lords of war.

Get your money's worth

As far as I can tell, the path to victory is to make sure you get the maximum return on your points invested in each unit. If you buy a gun, make sure you shoot it, shoot it well, and shoot it at the right target. If you buy a bike, make sure it carries you to the objective, the enemy's heavy support, or both. Don't buy anything you don't use, at least in matched play terms.

So, what do you think? Am I right? Am I playing the game wrong? What do we have left to learn? Let me know!