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  1. #21

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    Quote Originally Posted by Nabterayl View Post
    I agree that there seems to be a curious focus, at least in online wargaming articles, on works like The Art of War that treat war at a high level of abstraction. Knowing how to fight a mechanized infantry platoon or company is knowledge relevant to 40K, and there are things you can read to learn about those problems, but The Art of War is not really one of them.
    Exactly (and, for the record, I basically buy most of what you wrote in your second-to-last post, as well).

    I actually saw a guy, one time, who posted links to a bunch of infantry maneuver manuals used for training marine corps officers. Unfortunately, the only bits of it that I sat down and read before losing the link were too nitty-gritty--still, it was a better approach.

  2. #22
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    Quote Originally Posted by Denzark View Post
    Sun Tzu is grand strategic - strategic level. 40K is tactical level. the 2 do not apply. Actually the thread is misleading - you should read the art of war if you are interested in ancient military history and how it applies today. Why you shouldn't try to apply it to 40K is firstly because of the point I raise above, and secondly because trying to spout such pseudo-science about a random dice game just makes you look a nob.
    Points up, "what he said"

    Who really wants to play against someone who takes the game so seriously that they want to apply "historic tactics" to a dice game.

    Not much laughing in those games I bet.
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  3. #23

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    Quote Originally Posted by Deadlift View Post
    Points up, "what he said"

    Who really wants to play against someone who takes the game so seriously that they want to apply "historic tactics" to a dice game.

    Not much laughing in those games I bet.
    I do that and my friends and I laugh plenty. You can't play 40K without applying historic tactics. Whenever you figure out what you're going to do on your turn, you're deciding on tactics - and whether you think of yourself as a tactician or not, human beings have been deciding on tactics for long enough that the odds are pretty high you're trying something that doesn't have a historical analogue. The best you can do is also apply non-historic tactics.

    Whether you think in explicitly tactical terms when you play is another matter, of course, but that just comes down to mental organization. Everybody has their own way of figuring out what they're going to do next turn. Some people think about their conception of how their faction would act on the battlefield. Some people think about the game in terms of MEQs and GEQs and hordes. My dad thinks in terms of light infantry, heavy infantry, vehicles, and armor. Some people think in terms of probabilities.

    I doubt very much that the combination of paradigms you use impacts how much fun you have. I think that's more a factor of attitude and demeanor. I think it's a mistake to assume that a person who uses a certain type of mental organization will also tend to have a certain attitude and demeanor. Don't we all know folks who can mathhammer till the cows come home who are also a blast to play with, write fabulous background for their army, and can geek out at length about the fluff of the universe? I sure do.
    Last edited by Nabterayl; 07-19-2011 at 02:02 PM.

  4. #24
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    I think that completely dismissing Sun Tzu from wargaming is pretty shortsighted, because while he was focused on grand strategic campaigns, he was also trying to describe how to win with a powerful force that still suffered from serious vulnerabilities to noncombatants (The Art of War was written for nobility who by tradition were expected to lead armies despite a lack of significant training or experience).

    What can we take from Sun Tzu?

    From the 5 constant factors (those being Moral Law, Heaven, Earth, the Commander, and Morale and discipline), we can see a number of basic elements that are crucial to the outcome of any war and any game of warhammer, including both fantasy and 40k. From the Moral Law, we are advised as players to maintain our troops such that they will avoid tests of their morale and leadership where possible, and to mitigate the effects of a bad roll. From Heaven, we take note of the accounting for weather, and the ability to see and be seen (or unseen) by opposing forces. Earth is a massive hodgepodge of 40k elements, but they are often the deciding factors in many games: terrain for both yourself and your opponent, your ability to move over it and engage or disengage from your opponent on your terms. The Commander has the responsibility to carefully judge the performance and abilities of his units, and to stay focused on which elements of his and his opponents games are contributing towards victory or defeat in the game objective. And Morale and Discipline is actually a great way to discuss maneuver: How should your units deploy for maximum effect? Which units need to engage directly to benefit the whole the most? What is the risk and reward for sending your units into any given fight, and how are you contributing to the overall logistics of getting your army from game start to wherever they must be at game end? Also, Morale and Discipline directly addresses how you purchase your army pre-game, assigning upgrades and selecting units to complete the mission objective.

    All these elements are crucial to Warhammer. To quote The Art of ar's most important and valuable passage:

    Quote Originally Posted by The Art of War by Sun Tzu
    12. Therefore, in your deliberations, when seeking to determine the military conditions, let them be made the basis of a comparison, in this way:

    (1) Which of the two sovereigns is imbued with the Moral law?
    Whose army can continue functioning despite unexpected setbacks over the course of the game?

    (2) Which of the two generals has most ability?
    Who came best prepared to deal with any potential scenarios and opponents?

    (3) With whom lie the advantages derived from Heaven and Earth?
    What is the best way to move and deploy my forces to maximise my effectiveness and minimize his capabilities?

    (4) On which side is discipline most rigorously enforced?
    How focused are you on satisfying your win condition vs. your opponent? Is that focus subtle and leaving your opponent confused, or is he already seeing it and moving to stop you at your most crucial point?

    (5) Which army is stronger?
    A massive wave of Genestealers will rip apart a Descent of Angels list, but fall hard to a Leafblower.

    (6) On which side are officers and men more highly trained?
    Statlines go here. Think carefully. This is also a great place to consider your point costs.

    (7) In which army is there the greater constancy both in reward and punishment?
    Who picks their fights better? Are you going to throw all your units at that one unkillable deathstar while the rest of his army walks unscathed?

    By means of these seven considerations I can forecast victory or defeat.
    Damn right.
    Last edited by thecactusman17; 07-19-2011 at 04:08 PM. Reason: clarification and annotations.

  5. #25

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    Those all fall pretty clearly into the category of marginal, superfluous metaphor. In every single instance, you stretch the meaning to apply it to some facet of wargaming that is obvious without ever going to Sun Tzu

    Again, everything you need to know to be good at the game comes from the rulebooks and a very basic grasp of logic and math.

    Anything you get from Sun Tzu or Clausewitz is only useful once you've taken it way out of context, turned it into a trite metaphor, and pretended that it has suddenly become sage relevant advice. There's not one thing that any of those books can teach you that you can't get from the rules and common sense without all of the BS.

    And that is a good reason to dismiss them as wargaming aids. Interesting reads? Sure. A good way to sound pretentious when distributing obvious truisms? Absolutely.

    A good way to learn how to win wargames? Not really.

    And, as the Eurisko incident illustrates, that sort of thing can actually be harmful to your skill at wargaming--when you rely on twisting out-of-context advice into the context of wargaming you tend to fit the rules into a framework created by your understanding of real-world tactics, rather than taking them at face value, which can often blind you into missing ways of playing that are particularly effective or concluding that certain options are more effective than they really are. Not one of the Traveller players at that tournament had come up with Eurisko's game-breakingly-effective strategy on their own--and it was because they were forcing the rules into a framework created by their understanding of the conventions of naval combat, rather than taking them at face value. Play to the rules, not the conventions the rules are intended to represent. The two aren't the same, and pretending that one is the other might help you, but it isn't necessary and it might hurt you, too.

    The Art of War will teach you nothing about wargaming that the rules won't, except things which are either irrelevant or actually harmful.
    Last edited by Bean; 07-19-2011 at 04:37 PM.

  6. #26

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    Quote Originally Posted by Bean View Post
    Not one of the Traveller players at that tournament had come up with Eurisko's game-breakingly-effective strategy on their own--and it was because they were forcing the rules into a framework created by their understanding of the conventions of naval combat, rather than taking them at face value.
    I don't know anything else about the tournament in question, so are you sure about that? On what basis do you dismiss the possibility that one or more Traveller players hit upon the same strategy and discarded it because it wouldn't be fun, or instructive, or anything other than "effective at winning the tournament?" Was the Traveller tournament held to determine the best way to win a Traveler tournament?

    EDIT:
    Quote Originally Posted by thecactusman17 View Post
    I think that completely dismissing Sun Tzu from wargaming is pretty shortsighted
    If I understand him correctly, that isn't actually what Bean's doing. Consider two statements:
    1. One can learn nothing useful about wargaming by studying Sun Tzu.
    2. One can learn useful things about wargaming faster by studying X than one can by studying Sun Tzu.

    I believe (correct me if I'm wrong here, Bean) Bean is not saying the first, and is saying the second, where X is "the rules of a given game." Which I think is a fairly self-evident statement.

    EDIT FURTHER:
    One might ask, then, whether at some point studying military history and military theory is at all useful for a wargamer who is interested solely in winning wargames. My answer (and not Bean's, this time) would actually be yes, sort of. In order to usefully absorb things from a study of the rules, I think most human players need a way to access that information quickly. I know how to calculate kill probabilities, but when I want to know whether this squad of space marines can effectively engage a squad of nob bikers, I don't actually calculate the kill probabilities. I say to myself, "Nob bikers are a tank. Space marines are infantry. Is this a circumstance in which infantry could reasonably be expected to effectively engage a tank? No." That takes me about two seconds to do, which is a lot faster than it would take me to demonstrate to myself the same answer using the rules of the game.

    Other people probably do it differently (if you are thinking to yourself, "Nob bikers aren't tanks!" then you're one of them), but my point is that most people, I suspect, do it. They find a way to remember and apply the rules to the game other than the text of the rules themselves. If military history helps you encode things that way, more power to you. If you can do via algebra in two seconds what I can do via military history analogy, that's great, but I think there are a lot more wargamers who encode the rules via military history than who do so via algebra.
    Last edited by Nabterayl; 07-19-2011 at 05:28 PM.

  7. #27
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    The big disconnect between general military theory and wargaming is that the real world doesn't have explicit, set in stone rules. Soldiers don't hit on a 4+, Marines don't hit on a 3+, moral isn't taken on 2d6. Wargames have explicit, simple rules that are relatively easy to just do a little math, play a few games, and figure out what works. Since real life is infinitely more complex and chaotic than that, things aren't that simple.

    Since military theory has been developed to deal primarily with the complexity of the real world, you can say that it doesn't have a direct application to a specific wargame, because it doesn't. It's foolish to say that you can't learn anything from military theory, however, Sun Tzu included.

    For example, the US Army publishes the [URL="http://www.pvv.ntnu.no/~madsb/home/war/fm1005/principles.php"]Principles of War[/URL]. It's a set of concepts and ideas designed to guide a military leader through the planning process. It's very general and generic, since it is intended to encompass all of traditional warfare. It basically states that in a plan, one needs to consider the objective, offense, mass, economy of force, maneuver, unity of command, security, surprise and simplicity. Similar lists have been published by various other militarily around the world.

    Does is apply to wargaming, though? Objective means you have to keep your objective in mind, mass means you need to hit something with enough guns to kill it, maneuver means you have to get into advantageous positions, and so on and so forth. Some things you don't need to worry about, like unity of command. But those sound like really, really relevant advice to playing just about any game, 40k included.

    Does it tell you anything specific about how to win? No. It doesn't tell you how many meltaguns you need to put in your list to kill Land Raiders. That doesn't mean it's not useful. Quite the opposite. In fact, it's far more important to understand than the basic rules of the game, since you can figure those out as you go. Most anyone can learn to play reasonably well with a little effort. But it takes a lot more work and a lot more intelligence to go from being a good player to being a great player, and it's not rote game mechanics that will get you there.


    So, no Sun Tzu doesn't have a direct application to 40k. Reading it will not make you a better player. Understanding, then applying that understanding to the game, however, will*, and it's very shortsighted to think otherwise.


    *unless, of course, you figured out the lessons the Art of War covers on your own. Not that hard, considering how widespread the Art of War is, and how many people are competing with other people in various ways. Growing up you should be exposed to plenty of stuff that gives a clever person plenty of opportunity to learn the basics of military strategy.
    I am the Hammer. I am the right hand of my Emperor. I am the tip of His spear, I am the gauntlet about His fist. I am the woes of daemonkind. I am the Hammer.

  8. #28

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    Nabterayal:

    I can't make that assertion with perfect certainty, but it does stand to reason: it's a large annual tournament and Eurisko's approach was novel to both the participants and judges. It's certainly possible that someone both figured out a virtually fool-proof fleet and opted not to use it. However, unless the number of people who figured out Eurisko's approach on their own is insignificant, the probability that all of them opted to refrain from winning seems very unlikely.

    And, frankly, the difference between none and not enough to matter doesn't really change my point or argument, though I'm willing to concede that it might be the latter.

    I'm trying to round up a copy of Lenat's own paper on the topic (you can see a preview of it, [URL="http://www.deepdyve.com/lp/association-for-computing-machinery/learning-program-helps-win-national-fleet-wargame-tournament-EPl10Sp8x6"]here[/URL]) but I don't want to pay for it and I haven't found it for free anywhere.


    Darklink:

    "So, no Sun Tzu doesn't have a direct application to 40k. Reading it will not make you a better player. Understanding, then applying that understanding to the game, however, will*, and it's very shortsighted to think otherwise."

    I don't think that it's impossible to get anything out of the Art of War. I think that it's unnecessary, I see it causing people problems, and I think it's worth telling people to go to the rules instead of classic military texts if they want to become better at the game.

    And, for what it's worth, analysis of mechanics alone can certainly make you a great player. As you yourself note, it's not terribly hard to derive all of the applicable principles from the Art of War just by playing the game. Again, the classic military texts just aren't necessary, and I consistently see them doing people more harm than good when it comes to winning wargames.
    Last edited by Bean; 07-19-2011 at 05:50 PM.

  9. #29

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    On a side note, this illustrates perfectly what I see as the main attitudes towards the Codex Astartes. As thecactusman points out, The Art of War was novel for its audience. If it seems trite now, well, it's had at least 2500 years and a good deal of globalization to get that way, but somebody in China had to start.*

    Similarly, the Codex Astartes may seem overly hyped in the 41st millennium, but at the time it was written mankind had finished waging the very first interstellar war in millennia, with many more on the horizon. It was probably very timely for somebody to sit down and write a book about summarizing the state of the art military thinking of the day.

    * Not, of course, that The Art of War was the first instance of systematic Chinese military thinking.

  10. #30
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bean View Post
    Those all fall pretty clearly into the category of marginal, superfluous metaphor. In every single instance, you stretch the meaning to apply it to some facet of wargaming that is obvious without ever going to Sun Tzu
    Agreed, with this and with your overall argument...but is this really a necessary point? Are there a lot of people quoting Sun Tzu in a way that's not a marginal, superflous metaphor?

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