Why you shouldn't read The Art of War

[DarkLink]

Actually, your argument was a misrepresentation of the texts, and your reply missed what I was trying to say.

You sound like you're saying the source shares the blame for giving bad advice, because it advised the players to outflanks. Thing is, that's not what a good book on strategy would do. Or to be more precise, it's only one of a very large number of things that it would recommend as part of victory, and not always the right thing to do. Books like the Art of War go into great detail on when and why you should try to outflank, and how you should go about it.

The problem is not with the idea of outflanking itself, it's with the execution of that maneuver. The Art of War never says 'outflank just because you can'. Outflanking is just one of may options available, and isn't always the correct one.



Speaking of fallacies, your argument is actually a genuine strawman. Your line of reasoning for arguing against military texts seems to be this: 1) military text says outflanking is good. 2) outflanking doesn't always win. 3) ergo, military texts aren't very useful, because they don't always work.

You are misrepresenting the texts, and using that to dismiss the text. No text like the Art of War claims to be a simple checklist of "do this to win". They do say stuff like outflanking is good, but they don't claim that execution is unimportant, nor do they claim you should do it just because you can. They're saying, "if you do it right" you can get a big advantage. Your argument relies on ignoring that "if you do it right" part.





The 'auto-win' part of my statement is really irrelevant. Nor is my statement actually about the effectiveness of outflanking. If all you're getting out of my previous statement is an accusation that you think outflanking is an auto-win, then skip that part and read it again. I posted because of the funny sentence I put in there, but if you want to get serious and start throwing around accusations of logical fallacies and irrelevance you could at least actually read my comment for its actual content.

Even disregarding that, your statement against mine is self-contradictory. You claim that texts share the blame when their strategies don't work, presuming that they take special claim to aid in victory, then turn around and say that they don't take said claim. So which is it? Do the texts claim to ensure victory, and thus share the blame and should be ignored? Or is the blame solely on the players due to chance and misuse on the behalf of the players who lost, because the texts don't claim to be an auto-win. You claim to believe the latter, yet your argument relies on the former.




And if you're trying to say that outflanking is useless, you are incorrect. It is less useful in 40k than in real life, because there are no rules for crossfire and such, but it is still quite useful for controlling your opponent's movement and the like. But just like any other tactic, you have to execute it well if you want it to be effective. As Scott Adams says; "an idea is only as good as its execution. The idea itself is worthless."

[Bean]

Actually, your argument was a misrepresentation of the texts, and your reply missed what I was trying to say.

I addressed what you said word for word. If you meant to say something other than what you said, you're doing it wrong.

You sound like you're saying the source shares the blame for giving bad advice, because it advised the players to outflanks. Thing is, that's not what a good book on strategy would do. Or to be more precise, it's only one of a very large number of things that it would recommend as part of victory, and not always the right thing to do. Books like the Art of War go into great detail on when and why you should try to outflank, and how you should go about it.

I'm saying that if a source offers you advice and it turns out to be bad advice, that source deserves some blame. Even if the advice might be good in some situations, if it's not sufficiently qualified, it still deserves some blame.

The outflanking example was hypothetical.

As it happens, though, the Art of War does not go into great detail on when and why you should outflank or how to go about it. That's just not true.

The problem is not with the idea of outflanking itself, it's with the execution of that maneuver. The Art of War never says 'outflank just because you can'. Outflanking is just one of may options available, and isn't always the correct one.

Sure. This doesn't really refute or even actually address anything I've written.

Speaking of fallacies, your argument is actually a genuine strawman. Your line of reasoning for arguing against military texts seems to be this: 1) military text says outflanking is good. 2) outflanking doesn't always win. 3) ergo, military texts aren't very useful, because they don't always work.

No, that doesn't resemble my argument at all. Another strawman from you--and a hilariously hypocritical one.

You are misrepresenting the texts, and using that to dismiss the text. No text like the Art of War claims to be a simple checklist of "do this to win". They do say stuff like outflanking is good, but they don't claim that execution is unimportant, nor do they claim you should do it just because you can. They're saying, "if you do it right" you can get a big advantage. Your argument relies on ignoring that "if you do it right" part.

No, I'm not. You're either far less literate than you appear or you're intentionally misrepresenting my argument. If it's the latter, please stop.

Seriously, go back and read my posts. If this isn't just a lie, you have critically misunderstood what I'm saying. I know I've written a lot, but there's really no excuse for a failure of this depth.

The 'auto-win' part of my statement is really irrelevant. Nor is my statement actually about the effectiveness of outflanking. If all you're getting out of my previous statement is an accusation that you think outflanking is an auto-win, then skip that part and read it again. I posted because of the funny sentence I put in there, but if you want to get serious and start throwing around accusations of logical fallacies and irrelevance you could at least actually read my comment for its actual content.

Fair. I didn't realize that you just didn't mean part of what you were saying.

Even disregarding that, your statement against mine is self-contradictory. You claim that texts share the blame when their strategies don't work, presuming that they take special claim to aid in victory, then turn around and say that they don't take said claim. So which is it? Do the texts claim to ensure victory, and thus share the blame and should be ignored? Or is the blame solely on the players due to chance and misuse on the behalf of the players who lost, because the texts don't claim to be an auto-win. You claim to believe the latter, yet your argument relies on the former.

There's a difference between claiming to aid in victory and claiming to guarantee victory. As it happens, the Art of War does the latter, but I never raised that fact as a point in any of my arguments.

Your conflation is obviously flawed. It is not self-contradictory to blame a source for offering bad advice while simultaneously acknowledging that the source doesn't claim that its advice guarantees victory. You don't have to guarantee victory to offer advice, and advice that doesn't guarantee victory (but merely purports to aid in its pursuit) can still be bad advice if it fails to actually fails to actually aid in the pursuit of victory.

And, again, the Art of War actually does guarantee victory. Ironically, it does so in a line you yourself quoted in another thread:

'It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle."

Of course, this is good advice, but it also falsely guarantees victory. I didn't raise this as a point, because the fact that it falsely guarantees victory isn't really relevant, but it is highly amusing, given the circumstance.



Sorry, Darklink. I generally respect your posts, but this is irrational garbage. You consistently (and blatantly) misrepresent my positions, offering obviously flawed versions and attacking those as if that effort were somehow relevant. That's what a straw-man fallacy is, and you've committed several, here, including falsely characterizing my argument as one. Your logic is consistently, fatally flawed, and you have failed to make even one single point, here, that is both valid and legitimate.

Please try again. Or, really, if this is indicative of the quality of input you're going to make in the future, please don't. This sort of thing doesn't help anyone.

And if you're trying to say that outflanking is useless, you are incorrect. It is less useful in 40k than in real life, because there are no rules for crossfire and such, but it is still quite useful for controlling your opponent's movement and the like. But just like any other tactic, you have to execute it well if you want it to be effective. As Scott Adams says; "an idea is only as good as its execution. The idea itself is worthless."

Oh, and I didn't say anything that even resembles that. I know you couch this in a conditional, but you're still just making stuff up.

After all, if you're trying to say that kidnapping babies and selling their organs on the black market is a legitimate and ethically sound business plan, then you're incorrect.

[DarkLink]

I really could say the same to you, since you seem more interested in attacking my posts than discussing them, and we could sling mud over this all day, but I don't want to get into a pissing contest, especially if it's going to get petty. Half of the argument is over nitpicking sweeping generalizations, which is really pointless. Once you go down that road, everyone just gets pissed off at each other and nothing good comes from it.





So, backing up, but keeping with the outflanking example:

You have military text A, which says outflanking is a good strategy. Poor players, like in your example, will fail to take advantage of the strategy, in part because they don't know anything more than just "outflanking is good".

In this particular case, the Russ is not a very mobile unit, making it too slow to effectively outflank. While it has good firepower, it requires LOS which was blocked due to terrain. On top of that, the Russ isn't scoring and can't assault. Since it was too slow to maneuver into a good position, wasn't able to shoot effectively, and can't score or assault and thus force you to deal with it at some point you could just ignore it.

If the player had studied more of the strategy books more carefully, he probably would have come across something that stated that, in order to effectively outflank you have to be able to get the unit into place (either by speed or infiltration of some sort), and that the unit had to be able to actually threaten the enemy in some way.

It would take a bit of experience to realize that 6"+D6 movement is fairly slow, and to recognize the weaknesses of the Russ with regards to shooting, LOS, assault and scoring, so studying the rules and playing games is still vital.




So we can agree that you need experience and understanding of the rules to properly pull off a strategy like that, or really any strategy in general. You need to know tactics in order to pull things off. We can also agree that an understanding of various strategies like outflanking gives a player options for facing a wide variety of opponents. Understand both the strategy and the tactics, and you can face anything from Driagowing to Razorback spam to the Green Tide and have a chance at victory.






The disagreement is over the source of knowledge regarding strategy; are texts like the Art of War useful for imparting strategic understanding to a player? You maintain no, because you don't feel that generalized strategies carry over well to specific cases.

I believe that, yes, general study of strategy does help in specific cases. It doesn't have to be the Art of War specifically. I mean, I never have actually read it. I'll use a couple other examples in this case, though.





First off, the 9 principles of war that I mentioned earlier: Mass, Objective, Offensive, Surprise, Economy of force, Maneuver, Unity of command, Security, Simplicity.

Several are irrelevant to 40k, namely Unity of Command and Surprise, since there's only commanding officer (the player) and the only surprising thing in 40k is the randomness, which you don't control. Simplicity is also of minimal value, unless you're really good at confusing yourself.


As far as outflanking is concerned, everything else plays a role, which I'll outline below:
Mass: You need to have enough durability and firepower in both your main force and your outflanking force to accomplish the mission. This depends on your opponent's units as well as your own, and requires you to know the capabilities of both you and your opponent's units. This also ties in with one of the USMC's Leadership Principles; Employ your unit in accordance with its capabilities.

Objective: You need to have a clear reason for outflanking. Maybe it's to claim/contest an objective. Maybe it's to bypass some of your opponent's army and hit his backfield units (imagine you're facing Driagowing, for example).

Offensive: If you can threaten your opponent from multiple angles and deny him the ability to spread out and maneuver, you can put the pressure on him. Armies that benefit greatly from their ability to move quickly while still shooting, like BA Razorbacks and DE vehicle spam lists, will be hindered if they're trapped in a corner. If you can slow your opponent down enough by hemming him in, you put him on his back foot and can prevent him from threatening your Capture and Control objective, for example. Outflanking is one way to accomplish this, assuming you stick to the other principles mentioned here.

Economy of Force: You don't want to allocate too many units to either your main or your outflanking force. Send enough stuff to get the job done, and use anything that's left over to either act as a reserve, provide security, or accomplish a different objective. You have to be effective enough to get the job done, with a minimal amount of waste.

Maneuver: By hemming your opponent in by outflanking, you prevent him from maneuvering into position himself. You have most of the board to work with, he doesn't. On the other hand, you don't want to weaken yourself by spreading out too much, otherwise your opponent will be able to focus on one part of your army and destroy you piecemeal.

Security Each of your units has to be able to deal with any enemy threats that it will encounter. Similarly, you want to put your outflanking forces into a position where they threaten your opponent in a way that he cannot effectively deal with them.



By going over these points, you can, with an appropriate amount of experience and understanding of the rules, allocate the right units to the right place and utilize them effectively. This certainly doesn't replace rules knowledge or experience, but it opens up options for dealing with an opponent effectively. Going over these points, all of which are purely theoretical and come from military theorists and texts not unlike the Art of War, you can develop a plan to deal with your opponent more effectively.

Even though the 9 principles are very generic, you can use them for anything from 40k to leading actual troops into battle. The abstract theory presented here can be applied to just about any game involving strategy, regardless of the specific details of the rules.






Another quick example, imagine you are facing Driagowing. You just happened to have watched 300 the other day. While 300 isn't historically accurate, you still know the basic idea of what happened: A small, elite force held a pass because the terrain favored their heavy armor over hordes of light infantry, until they were betrayed and trapped in a corner when the enemy outflanked them.

So you look at Driago and friends, and realize you can pull a similar trick. Driago can only move in one direction, and he's too slow to redeploy, so you split your army. Driago goes after one half, which you do your best to keep alive, while your other half goes around Driago and hits the backfield. Take out those psyrifle dreads and razorbacks full of min-maxed squads, and all that's left is Driago. There's your strategy, and it's straight out of the history books.







None of this means it's easy to pull off, and none of it invalidates the need to know the rules and have some experience with what works and what doesn't. But it undermines the fundamental idea that studying generic texts about strategy or battles that seem to have little relevance to a modern world with big guns is useless.

A mastery of strategy is just as important as a mastery of the rules, and texts like the Art of War can potentially be used to help. Even if all they do is getting you thinking along the right lines, it helps you. Sometimes the smallest nudge in the right direction can turn a mediocre player into a good one.

Doesn't have to be the Art of War. In fact, more recent stuff is probably much more relevant because they've had thousands of years to work the details out and build upon the original ideas. But either way, texts like that are far from useless.


Edit:
And the Driagowing/300 example? I've played several people who would have really benefited from that line of thinking. They were so concerned with Driago and friends that they wasted their whole army trying, and failing, to kill him. Even so much as saying "y'know, you can just try and avoid him and kill my other stuff" would have opened up their options a lot, and made the game a lot tougher for me.

[Bean]

First of all, this is a much better post, Darklink, and I appreciate it. I'm going to respond to it in depth, when I have a moment to sit down and do it, but for the moment, let me address one minor point:

In this particular case, the Russ is not a very mobile unit, making it too slow to effectively outflank. While it has good firepower, it requires LOS which was blocked due to terrain. On top of that, the Russ isn't scoring and can't assault. Since it was too slow to maneuver into a good position, wasn't able to shoot effectively, and can't score or assault and thus force you to deal with it at some point you could just ignore it.

There's a little more to it than that; the issue is slightly more fundamental.

It's not as though the Russ were heading towards a good spot on the board and was just too slow to make it. The Russ wasn't heading anywhere useful at all. The player believed not only the it was heading somewhere useful but that it was somewhere useful--that being on a flank had some intrinsic worth.

It didn't fail to move into a good position because it was too slow. It failed to move into a good position because the player had derived a false notion from classical military strategy and wasn't even trying to get it into a position that was actually worthwhile--because he thought the position it was in was worthwhile, and was so blinded by his (admittedly poor) knowledge of classical military strategy that he couldn't properly evaluate the position for its actual benefit.

There's a pretty big difference between a unit being too slow to outflank effectively and outflanking not being a viable strategy at all in that situation. The latter was the case, here.

[Bean]

You have military text A, which says outflanking is a good strategy. Poor players, like in your example, will fail to take advantage of the strategy, in part because they don't know anything more than just "outflanking is good".

Agreed so far.

In this particular case...

I discussed this part in my last post.

If the player had studied more of the strategy books more carefully, he probably would have come across something that stated that, in order to effectively outflank you have to be able to get the unit into place (either by speed or infiltration of some sort), and that the unit had to be able to actually threaten the enemy in some way.

It does seem likely, yes--though I don't think I've ever actually read a book of military strategy which really discusses this.

It would take a bit of experience to realize that 6"+D6 movement is fairly slow, and to recognize the weaknesses of the Russ with regards to shooting, LOS, assault and scoring, so studying the rules and playing games is still vital.

Agreed.

So we can agree that you need experience and understanding of the rules to properly pull off a strategy like that, or really any strategy in general.

I do agree, yes.

Well, I'd qualify by saying that, in sort of a theoretical sense, experience isn't really necessary--just knowledge of the rules and logic. But sure. Experience can be pretty helpful, and everyone I know relies on it to some extent.

You need to know tactics in order to pull things off. We can also agree that an understanding of various strategies like outflanking gives a player options for facing a wide variety of opponents.

I don't really agree that you need to know "tactics" in order to pull things off. However, it's possible that this is because what I mean by tactics is something different from what you mean by tactics.

What I mean when I say tactics are consistent, generalized decision-making schema. Things like, "flanking" or "denied flank" or "everything in reserve" or even "ignore the deathstar" can be tactics, and they are tactics if you treat them as things unto themselves. If you look at the board thinking, "should I flank with this unit?" you're treating flanking as a tactic in the sense in which I use the word--you're applying a generalized scheme to your decision-making process.

You don't need generalized schema in order to "pull things off" or make good play decisions. Understanding them doesn't necessarilly give a player more options for facing a wide variety of opponents than not understanding them would.

In fact, every decision to which the application of a tactic might lead you is one to which you could always have come without the tactic. More-over, the application of schema can only limit the options you allow yourself to consider--that's what they're for, after all.

It's not impossible to gain new ideas through the analysis of tactics or other schema, but it's simply not accurate to say that they are necessary. Indeed, their role is inherently one of limitation--and if you are a good player, that doesn't really help you.


So, no. We don't really agree on all of those points.

The disagreement is over the source of knowledge regarding strategy; are texts like the Art of War useful for imparting strategic understanding to a player? You maintain no, because you don't feel that generalized strategies carry over well to specific cases.

I believe that, yes, general study of strategy does help in specific cases. It doesn't have to be the Art of War specifically. I mean, I never have actually read it. I'll use a couple other examples in this case, though.

That is one point of disagreement, yes.

I do maintain that generalized strategies about things that are not 40k don't carry over well to specific cases in 40k. Essentially, any such generalized strategy must be so far removed from its actual meaning that you are not really left with the same thing at all--you're left with something that you created yourself. At best, you might say that the original strategy was a source of inspiration, but you simply can't take anything that constitutes a strategy from classical military history and apply it to 40k. Every time you try to do so, you necessarily end up applying something that is not the strategy you began with.

Really, this point is made pretty obvious when you consider other texts that revolve around handing out advice. Think about a cookbook. A cookbook has exactly as much to say about playing 40k as The Art of War--which is to say nothing at all. It's certainly possible that you could read in a cookbook something that inspires you to come up with a generally worthwhile 40k tactic, just as it's possible to read in The Art of War something that inspires you to come up with a generally worthwhile 40k tactic.

However, if someone were trying to get good at playing 40k, you'd never say, "go read a cookbook." So, why would you say, "Go read The Art of War?" You can come away from either with some worthwhile insight into 40k, but that's not sufficient. Neither consitutes a good way to learn to be better at 40k, because neither actually talks at all about playing 40k--or anythign that's even particularly similar.


However, there's another point of disagreement--and that is that I don't think you should be using tactics at all. They'll never lead you to good conclusions you couldn't have come to without them, and they will sometimes lead you to conclusions that are bad. Even generally worthwhile schema (and lets be fair, it's highly unlikely that you'll never use any during your play career) should eventually be discarded or their influence over your decisions minimized if you want to become a top-end player.



I'm going to skip responding your example, because everything I'd need to respond to your example I've already written.

[Bean]

Two more points:

None of this means it's easy to pull off, and none of it invalidates the need to know the rules and have some experience with what works and what doesn't. But it undermines the fundamental idea that studying generic texts about strategy or battles that seem to have little relevance to a modern world with big guns is useless.

I never said that studying generic texts about strategy or battles is useless. I said it isn't a good way to get better at 40k. I stand by that, and this doesn't really undermine it.

A mastery of strategy is just as important as a mastery of the rules, and texts like the Art of War can potentially be used to help. Even if all they do is getting you thinking along the right lines, it helps you. Sometimes the smallest nudge in the right direction can turn a mediocre player into a good one.

This I particularly disagree with. A mastery of strategy is really not nearly as important as a mastery of the rules. If I master master the rules, I can figure out everything I need to know to make good decisions from there without ever gaining a mastery or even a basic knowledge of classical strategy.

If I master strategy but fail to master the rules, I'll never really know whether my strategy will actually produce, in the game, the results I want it to produce. Without mastery of the rules, mastery of strategy is of limited and unreliable value.

To become as skilled a player as it is possible to be, one must be a master of the rules.

However, being a master of classical strategy is not in any way required.

Now, if you mean by "master of strategy" something other than "master of classical strategy" then you're going to have to define your term.

[Hive777]

Bean, it looks like the discussion in the thread I started and the discussion in this one are overlapping a bit.

I'm interested in what you say in your last post: "However, there's another point of disagreement--and that is that I don't think you should be using tactics at all. They'll never lead you to good conclusions you couldn't have come to without them, and they will sometimes lead you to conclusions that are bad. Even generally worthwhile schema (and lets be fair, it's highly unlikely that you'll never use any during your play career) should eventually be discarded or their influence over your decisions minimized if you want to become a top-end player."

If I understand you correctly, the better player/strategist/what-have-you is not the player who focuses his/her time on developing specific plans or procedures; instead, it's the player who spends his or her time learning precisely how the system works. That is to say, it's something like learning about a car by taking it apart and studying it on a mechanical and engineering level instead of just learning how to drive it in specific condition sets.

And that would include knowing how your codex works on a mechanical and engineering level, so to speak, because that's the better way to know what to do when you have to adapt to changing or new conditions--i.e., models or rules you haven't seen before or don't know that much about, different abilities, and so on--instead of just having a set of tactics to fall back on.

[Bean]

Bean, it looks like the discussion in the thread I started and the discussion in this one are overlapping a bit.

I'm interested in what you say in your last post: "However, there's another point of disagreement--and that is that I don't think you should be using tactics at all. They'll never lead you to good conclusions you couldn't have come to without them, and they will sometimes lead you to conclusions that are bad. Even generally worthwhile schema (and lets be fair, it's highly unlikely that you'll never use any during your play career) should eventually be discarded or their influence over your decisions minimized if you want to become a top-end player."

If I understand you correctly, the better player/strategist/what-have-you is not the player who focuses his/her time on developing specific plans or procedures; instead, it's the player who spends his or her time learning precisely how the system works. That is to say, it's something like learning about a car by taking it apart and studying it on a mechanical and engineering level instead of just learning how to drive it in specific condition sets.

Essentially, yes, but your analogy is a little off.

However, I would stress that driving a car and playing 40k are, as activities, fundamentally dissimilar in a way that is relevant to the discussion.


If you want to learn how to drive a car, you're better off just driving it a lot. No question there.

If you want to learn how a car works, you're obviously better off taking it apart and studying it on a mechanical and engineering level than you are driving it, but knowing how a car works is passive--it doesn't involve decision-making, and isn't analogous to playing 40k at all.

So, back to driving a car.

Driving a car is essentially a motor skill--it involves reflex and reaction, responding to stimuli, usually without conscious analysis. When you practice driving a car, most of what you're doing is building the procedural memories--what is sometimes called "muscle memory"--that you need to manage the routine reflexive tasks involved.

However, this element of the driving activity is obviously not analogous to 40k--being good at 40k doesn't really rely on procedural memory at all.

Driving sometimes involves conscious analysis and decision-making. In this, though, knowing how the car works can often be quite helpful (and that effort you probably didn't put into tearing the car apart and studying it would, thus, likely come in handy). This sort of decision isn't common for the average person, but it's not unheard-of, either. If your gas-light comes on, knowing how the gas meter works will help you figure out how much gas you have left. If your check-engine light comes on, knowing how your check-engine light works can help you evaluate whether you need to stop driving your car right now or sometime later in the week.

Of course, some of these decisions (like the gas decision) can be made from experience, but that really brings us around to the main reason that this isn't a particularly good analogy:

I'm not talking about experience vs. analysis, here. I'm talking about schema-based decision-making vs. free-form decision making.

When you're driving your car, you use tons of decision-making schema--we might even call some of them "tactics," and this isn't a bad thing. For one thing, some decisions while driving have to be made very quickly, and there's no question that schema help you make decisions faster. For another, excellence in driving isn't required--just competence. If you follow a schema and it produces a slightly less fuel-efficient result, for instance, no-one really cares.


40k, however, does not require you to make decisions quickly. There's really no need for time-saving shortcuts in the decision-making process (which is all that schema, or "tactics," are). Second, you're not just trying to be adequate. You're trying to make the best decision possible.

A schema is a way to help make decisions faster, and it usually comes at a price--they encourage you to ignore possibilities that they don't cover. Here's an example from driving:

You see other people around you put on their brakes and begin to slow down. When deciding how to respond, you might apply the following schema: when other people brake, you should consider braking as well. It's a good schema; it almost always leads you to the conclusion that you should brake, and that's almost always a good conclusion. More-over, since the situation is time-sensitive, the utilization of the schema can be important in the interest of braking quickly enough.

However, that schema discourages you from considering other options--like simply driving off the road to avoid the braking cars. This is fine when you're driving, because driving off the road to avoid the braking cars is usually a bad idea, and (more importantly) even if there is some other alternative that is better than braking, it's very unlikely to matter much if you forgo it--even if going off-road would get you to your destination faster and without any negative consequences, it just doesn't matter that much, and safe is better than sorry.

In 40k, though, there's no time-sensitivity. The benefit of using the schema (time saving) isn't really important, the goal is to produce the best possible result--not just any adequate result--and sometimes the best option is driving around the other cars (metaphorically speaking, of course.)

So, in 40k, unlike in driving, the use of schema is not desirable. You don't need them, and they come with a potential downside.

This is what I was saying. It's not really a matter of experience vs. analysis--schema can come from either. It's a matter of whether this sort of schema are good for you at all in 40k, and I think the answer is no--regardless of where they come from. The analogy, then, is flawed because schema are good for you when you're driving, and this is because driving and 40k have very different sets of goals and restraints.


Interestingly, if you're playing in a tightly-timed environment (for example, some Warmachine/Hordes tournaments use chess clocks) schema can be helpful as time-saving tools--and I find that I sometimes have difficulty in this sort of timed event because my habit is to avoid utilizing them. For 40k, though, I find that I always have enough time to make decisions without the application of "tactics" to the problem.

Any evaluation of the efficacy of a particular move must include all of the relevant aspects of the system in order to be legitimate. That same evaluation, can be entirely legitimate without any grounding in specific, preconceived plans or procedures.

[Lucian Kain]

False

[pathwinder14]

What I take away is this:

Conventional thinking results from repeating the steps of successful unconventionalists.