Lono's art of Warhammer

Welcome everyone to my new blog ! I love warhammer , both 40k and fantasy and I especially love the tactics/strategy aspect of the game. I’ve read a lot of warhammer forums and websites but found too few that talked about the strategy aspect of the game. So I’m starting this blog with the idea of talking about strategy, game related topics and also whatever crosses my mind. I’ll try to keep it game related.

Who am I?

Like I said in my introduction I’ve been playing warhammer since 1999. I originally started with a skaven army for fantasy but soon started playing 40k as all my friends where getting into it. My first ‘’real’’ army was a Dark Angel army that I still play to this day and that remains in a way my main army. Since I started playing I’ve been playing in numerous tournaments(both locals and rogue traders) and I even worked as an employee in a gaming shop(kinda like a GW store). For me the strategy/tactics aspect of this game is what keeps me going and I love nothing more than to discuss tactics with other players. And for those wondering I’m from Québec, Canada.

Are you a gaming mathematician?

Talking with a friend of mine the other day about his army composition and why he was struggling I started to explain to him that his army lacked enough low AP weapons and had not enough transports for his troops. As we talked I realized something. I was explaining to him that Howling Banshees, with their high armor save are very vulnerable to shooting, especially from dedicated anti-infantry weapons. I was giving him examples telling him how on average banshees on foot would be assaulting on the third turn and how much he could loose based on his opponent dices. I would say that a predator destructor would kill about 4 to 5 banshees a turn wich meant they would probably all get killed. Hence the need for a wave serpent wich would protect them from small arms fire and would require heavy anti-tank weapons plus would expose them only to fire for a turn, less if he kept them longer in the transport.

I was explaining all this and I realised that he wasn't seeing his banshees in terms of numbers and oposing army. For him banshees are elite warriors who can slice and dice their way through an entire army and wouldn't even take a hit because of their superb agility. Where I was considering the army thinking about numbers he was thinking of fluff.

I realized with this that there's is two opposite way of thinking when building an army. First you can think in numbers and mathematics, consider that unit X when in situation Y will have a Z perfomance ratio. On the other hand you can say that a Leman Russ is the best tank in the galaxy and whoever says otherwise gets a shell in the head. Of course the first approach tends to yield better results in the long term. Heck, you need to at least consider it when you build a serious army. Going only with fluff reasons is more often than not a sure road to defeat. But at the same time I've experience countless times where a unit chosen for fluff outperforms it fellows and in the end is the game winner piece. How's that possible?

Mathematicians will tell you that since it's a dice based game any model has the potential, no matter how slim, to win the game by itself based on pure randomness. Even had a psychology student tell me that because we focused on a particular element we uncounsciously put him in position to perform and that we saw in a better ligh its contributions to winning while ignoring the other models contributions. I suppose they can both be right.

For my part I'm much closer to the mathematician approach to strategy than the ''fluff'' approach. I can tell you for sure that deploying 1'' from the starting line is a good idea to get out of the 24'' reach. I can tell you that 10 bolters rapidfiring on space marines results in a 2 death average. And this approach made me win more game than loose them. By constantly looking at success chances and so forth I can recover better when I hit a string of badluck.

On the other hand I've always had a soft spot for the Deathwing and I cannot count the number of times they survived against impossible odds when I send them charging alone... makes me wonder if pure maths are the way to go.