I've been away from home for most of this week with some family stuff. Not fun at all! On the car trip home (3+ hours) I got to thinking about my Khador, about the Skorne stuff I was contemplating and generally about strengths and weaknesses in my approach to gaming. Before going onto the main topic of the blog I should make a note about the Skorne. In the past months that feeling of faction ADD has sometimes crept in. Wanting to give Hordes a whirl (and get a more intuitive understanding of the limits of the fury mechanic), I have seriously considered Circle (purchased Mohsar) and; more recently, the Skorne (purchasing Morghoul2, Molik Karn, a Cyclops Brute and minimum Bast Handlers for a local journeyman league before I realised I couldn't play). Anyway, before I can actually contemplate playing a faction I have to find at least 3 casters I want to play (I also have this weird thing of not wanting a prime and epic version of any one caster in my tripartites). Skorne are one of those factions that I can actually find enough models I like. For Circle, I liked Mohsar (a lot), Cassius (a bit) aaaaand no one else (and I hated the look of their infantry). For Skorne, I like Morghoul2, Hexeris1, Mordikaar and Naaresh. So it could be a goer in the future (notice my penchant for rubbish casters).
When it comes to success in a warfare like WMH I think you really need a strong mental suite of abilities AND a strong psychological suite of abilities. Most people lack the latter. I think I have decent mental abilities but very well developed psychological ones.
By mental I mean all the mathematical abilities. Sort of base line stuff like "knowing 2d6 averages to 7". This sort of basic working knowledge is essential to even having a chance. I actually think this is wrong. Expected damage for a 2d6 roll; at dice minus 7, is actually 1 (there is a thread on the PP forums explaining this somewhere). Then there is the element that probabilities rather than a mean give you better decision making evidence. I'm very good at this stuff. I kind of fall down in list building and judging distance. My list building isn't bad but I tend to like cute option even though I have these ethos that simple is better. There is a lot more to the mental aspects of the game; like understanding the meta (future post warning "the meta doesn't exist") and accounting for it (I am actually exceptional at building skew lists at small point levels but; hey, who isn't!), I am pretty average at choosing which list to play upon seeing my opponents list (I want to blog on this topic too) and I downright suck at properly evaluating how dangerous my opponents list is before I've been burned by it once. Case in point, the first time I play against eHaley I thought "she doesn't look too good" and I proceeded to lose without killing a model.
However, the psychological - oh the psychological - this is where I make ground up in tournaments. This stuff is crucial. If you are one to lose your composure when you lose a key model or get flustered when you snake eyes that spell or play cautiously against your opponent because you know he won the last 3 local tournaments and has placed top 3 in every major convention.... If any of these apply to you then you probably have a weaker psychological side to your gameplay. This last example is so potent because I have seen loads of people lose just after match ups are announced and just before lists are chosen because they stop believing they can win. You just can't do this in this game. It is seriously better to lose on turn 1/2 to some assassination you didn't see than to dawdle up the board and not make any plays with intent. At least getting killed early helps you learn about positioning and defending the runs (and even a 99.9% guaranteed assassination will fail sometime).
Also stop forgetting about command checks people. CMD 8 will fail like 25% of the time (will double check the figure in a tick) so stop losing the plot when your command 8 dudes fail. It is actually not that unlikely.
The other point about psychological gameplay is knowing how to push your opponent into making mistakes. Now you don't want to be a dick about it but you can do stuff to bring this part of the game to the fore. A lot of these things you'll do anyway but stuff like going after some key support model. You can use tough or abomination to make situations that can wear the psyche thin occur. If you are a renowned good player (which I am not) you can just play fast and play confidently. It makespeople nervous and nervous people make mistakes. The other thing you can do is punish as harshly as you can minor mistakes people make. If they mess up their spacing and you get a shot onto Aiyana or onto beast handlers or something then take the shot. It often makes people make more mistakes in their next turn because they get dirty with themselves for leaving that model in the lurch.
The other side of this fence is to just not let stuff like this bother you. If you are losing then maybe don't go for the Hail Mary but put your caster in a position they are tempted to go for him. You are more likely to survive an assassination attempt than succeed one and then you can probably get their caster. This is the number one way of people snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. "Going for it" is often dumb. So if you are losing then try make them go for it. Moe often than they will think they'll get diced - e.g. An opponent went for it against Zerkova with. pSkarre (or her force rather) and got something like 4 mechanithralls and brute thralls and the kraken on full focus on her under feat, I survived after kraken roll snake eyes on damage (might be a bad example because now that I think about it I think he forgot to add feat bonus to kraken). Zerkova on 1 box is enough to kill pSkarre (also low due to some damage I put on her and cutting for feat). The absolute Worst case is you lose; which was what was going down then already.
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