Dealing with Mathhammer players

[Bean]

there are many different ways to play 40k, and I'm not talking about apocalypse or planet strike. most of these fall in to two different categories, hard core or fluffy. hard core, just as you would imagine, takes not prisoners. this is where the cheese belongs, or your "mathhammer". this is how tournaments are played. that is, of course, if you want to win. fluffy play is where you get to run what ever you want. you can put some backstory in if you want. drop in some crazy scenarios and bam you have it.

it sounds to me like you and your buddies are playing 2 different games. if they want to play competitive then play them competitive. but i feel they should give you the same respect.

a lot of players like to play competitive 24/7 not because they need the practice, but because they only find fun in winning. if you really have a problem with how they are playing then tool to crush them in a couple games and i bet they would be more willing to play some of the less competitive lists.

Honestly, it probably won't even take that--and what I've found is that "fluff" players who tool up to "crush competitive players" are usually disappointed and get even more frustrated as a result.

Just ask them. I don't think I know anyone who would refuse to modify their army (within reason) if you just asked them.

What you shouldn't do is accuse them--they're not doing anything wrong, and people don't respond well to accusations.

Don't say, "man, quit playing those power-gamy, win-at-all-cost armies! you're un-fun!"

Say, "Hey, I'm really not having fun playing against your army, do you think you could do me a favor and maybe try a different type of game? Perhaps we could play a fluffy scenario, or, you know, you could at least leave out x, y, or z unit that I have particular trouble dealing with."

I really think that, if you take the latter approach, you won't run into much opposition. Most opponents will be happy to help you have a good time if you let them know that you're not having fun and what they can do to help.

[DarkLink]

Straight math is the quick way to competitive gaming. How many tanks can you kill per turn? How many Marines can you kill a turn? How many models do you have, and how many vehicles? The more the better, so maximizing your damage output while minimizing cost is a basic skill any competitive player spends a lot of time on.


The best players, however, tend to take a step beyond this. Most of the top level competitive lists tend to have slightly odd choices. It's pretty common for them to even look like a bunch of nonsense, as if the player just took one or two of every unit he felt like. Part of this is individual skill, where some players are better at different aspects of the game than others and so adjust their lists accordingly. More importantly, these players have found synergies within the list that aren't immediately apparent that are lacking in a more vanilla 'netlist'. Taking an odd unit here or there opens up options that would otherwise not be available, so even if it puts a small dent in their numbers the increased tactical flexibility more than makes up for it.


So, yeah, it's totally possible to have weird but competitive lists. Making them work just takes a lot of skill and a unique understanding of the army, though.

[Grenadier]

I'm not sure I understand this "mathhammer" thing. Especially since I am terrible at math. But if it is about players who like to squeeze every single point they can into an army and choose heavily laden hard hitting units like fully tricked out Terminators or Command squads I'm familiar with it. If it's about players who just try to build an uber powerful unstoppable army I know all about it.

I never try building a fluffy list or a math list. Generally I build my army around something I love about the army. In the case of my Black Templars I love how cool they look. Probably a silly reason to pick an army. I don't care if they're great at hand to hand and suck at shooting. So my army begins with the "coolness" factor. And I'll fill it full of the greatest and coolest looking units. Doesn't exactly make for a super powerful army.

After I do this I identify my army's strengths and weaknesses. And will get additional units to compensate for the weaknesses. Always with an eye towards how they look. To an extent fluff comes into play for my Templars. And now I'm content with my army. It still has certain glaring weaknesses: it lacks significant fast attack potential and it suffers from having any hard hitting shooty units. But it is troop heavy. And it's all about swarming my enemy. My Templars will take lots of casualties. And they may not always win. But they play like Templars. Of course I could math it up on the list and try to get more bang for my buck. I could power up the army. But then it just wouldn't feel right.

Conversely, with my Imperial Guard I built my army around the thing I love best about them: shooting. So tanks are my main models. They're everything to me. Consequently all my non-tank selections were chosen for one reason only: to support tanks. And so I have infantry squads and heavy weapons teams. Due to the army's sheer firepower I forsook fast attack. I have 6 sentinels but they aren't real fast attack in my opinion. I also gave up specialized units like psykers and priests. My army is all about backing up my tanks and letting my tanks handle the bulk of enemy killing. There's nothing fancy in my army. I go light on upgrades and so forth. It's just pure shooty death.

My army isn't invincible though. The troops can be cut down easily by Marines. And there is a decided decrease in my "death dealing per turn" for every vehicle lost. The loss of each tank is a blow to the army. And if you take out enough of my tanks the issue is in doubt for me. And since I have no serious fast attack I'm not capable of quickly responding to certain kinds of threats and have little in the way of proper outflanking potential. This army, like my Templars, isn't "win at all costs."

Winning is always fun. And I've won far more than I've lost. But to me making an army that is impossible to beat takes the fun out of the game. When my Dark Angels opponents brings his fancy little marines loaded with every special little thing, wargear, special character, etc....you'd think it's going to be an unbeatable foe. For sure he has EVERYTHING you can give them in his army. And he'll bring the most. Power gaming at its finest. Yet my armies regular beat his.

I think when you intentionally seek to build an army that can't be beaten, when you math it up or power game, you've actually hurt your army. Because you get too comfortable with it. You think it can be beaten. You think you've got all your bases covered. And if your opponent knows how to "pick apart" an army you can lose quickly. I know which units to worry about the most. When you know how to dismantle an army properly no army can be unbeatable. So why build one to be unbeatable?

[Night Haunter]

Everyone has their own thing. Personally, I choose a unit I want to use and then run the math for them to figure out what I should expect on average for performance against certain opponents. That's how I do it anyway.

[vharing]

I had an opponent that became very upset because his "averages" werent working. I was wiping out his SW with my all DC Blood Angels army. His dice rolls were going really poorly and my normally terrible luck was doing awesome. By the end of turn 3, with over half his army was gone and me with only a handful of dead models, he told me that is army isnt meant to lose this bad and was trying to say I was cheating some how. One of his friends told him that I had been playing fine and that it was his bad luck. After that he suddenly had a phone call an had to leave. Sometimes math hammer just doesnt work.

[Bergermeister84]

Mathhammer doesn't work for people who don't understand the underlying principles behind probability. Warhammer 40k deals with dice and results cannot be perfectly predicted. Bad luck happens and is just part of the game.

[Blaznak]

Just a thought for you:
The "mathhammer" type players out there I've met tend to have a preconcieved notion how armies work. They tend not to play the odds or go for unusual tactics. This does not make them bad players: far from it. However, it does give you places to exploit their armies.
1) Clump'm and lump'm. Your mathhammer works all day long, but my entire army is going to focus on your unit A until it is dead and then move on to the next. If you get good target priority and table placement, you may leave the mathhammer player scrambling to "add things up". Example: Table up on just one table quarter and send your entire army against a key unit or two. Disadvantage: Well, all your grots are in one buggy, so to speak...
2) Play the odds. Use fun units that have a lot chance of a big payoff and exploit them. I'll use Orks for example: Old Zogworts got about a 50/50 chance of making an independent character go all squiggy. The horror on a player's face when they realize the lynchpin of their force is about to become an intelligent rabid fungus is priceless. Another Ork example is the Shokk Attack Gun. Lets just say its a 1 in 36 of instant death for you or the enemy, but I'll take those odds! Essentially you are becoming a "chaos hammer"as opposed to their mathhammer!
3) Don't do the expected. So: There you are with an all terminator army marching / teleporting around you. Wow. Logic is "Shoot Fiighty/Fight Shooty" Termies are very fighty so shoot'm up! right? Wellllll.... look at your forces and charge troops in that can act as turn sinks. Got somethign with invulnerable saves? or lots of attacks on the charge? Get them stuck in! Make Mathhammer react to you. (I know that example probably isn't the best but hopefully you get the idea).
4) Don't worry about it! Play your army to your strengths and don't focus on the win loss so much. I know I do A LOT BETTER in my games when I do that. Do I forget the scenario conditions? Do I -not- want to win? Nope. Not at all. BUT, I try to focus on what will be fun to do with my army from turn to turn. I fought an extremely skilled, extremely tweaked, extremely mathed out Necron force with my orks. I said to myself "Screw it - going to just play this one orky". I Looked at something and said "Dunno what it is but it smells funny. Get it lads!" rinse and repeat. Sure enough, my orks acted like orks and I won the game I really don't think I should have.
So, there are my thoughts!!!
Good luck,
Blaz...

[Bean]

Just a thought for you:
The "mathhammer" type players out there I've met tend to have a preconcieved notion how armies work. They tend not to play the odds or go for unusual tactics. This does not make them bad players: far from it. However, it does give you places to exploit their armies.
1) Clump'm and lump'm. Your mathhammer works all day long, but my entire army is going to focus on your unit A until it is dead and then move on to the next. If you get good target priority and table placement, you may leave the mathhammer player scrambling to "add things up". Example: Table up on just one table quarter and send your entire army against a key unit or two. Disadvantage: Well, all your grots are in one buggy, so to speak...
2) Play the odds. Use fun units that have a lot chance of a big payoff and exploit them. I'll use Orks for example: Old Zogworts got about a 50/50 chance of making an independent character go all squiggy. The horror on a player's face when they realize the lynchpin of their force is about to become an intelligent rabid fungus is priceless. Another Ork example is the Shokk Attack Gun. Lets just say its a 1 in 36 of instant death for you or the enemy, but I'll take those odds! Essentially you are becoming a "chaos hammer"as opposed to their mathhammer!
3) Don't do the expected. So: There you are with an all terminator army marching / teleporting around you. Wow. Logic is "Shoot Fiighty/Fight Shooty" Termies are very fighty so shoot'm up! right? Wellllll.... look at your forces and charge troops in that can act as turn sinks. Got somethign with invulnerable saves? or lots of attacks on the charge? Get them stuck in! Make Mathhammer react to you. (I know that example probably isn't the best but hopefully you get the idea).
4) Don't worry about it! Play your army to your strengths and don't focus on the win loss so much. I know I do A LOT BETTER in my games when I do that. Do I forget the scenario conditions? Do I -not- want to win? Nope. Not at all. BUT, I try to focus on what will be fun to do with my army from turn to turn. I fought an extremely skilled, extremely tweaked, extremely mathed out Necron force with my orks. I said to myself "Screw it - going to just play this one orky". I Looked at something and said "Dunno what it is but it smells funny. Get it lads!" rinse and repeat. Sure enough, my orks acted like orks and I won the game I really don't think I should have.
So, there are my thoughts!!!
Good luck,
Blaz...

I think you've confused "mathhammer player" with "idiot." =P

Seriously, there's really no reason to think that a player who applies probability math to their evaluations will be unduly hampered by any of these "tactics."

Point 4 is a good point, though.

[AbusePuppy]

Anyone who says mathhammer "doesn't work" or "can't account for bad luck" doesn't understand what most of the common mathhammer tools are predicting. It's entirely possible to calculate the odds of particular strings of results, it's just not commonly presented because it's more complicated to interpret and isn't really needed.

Math is a tool. Saying a hammer "doesn't work" because you keep hitting your thumb with it is a fault with you, not with the hammer.

[Bean]

Anyone who says mathhammer "doesn't work" or "can't account for bad luck" doesn't understand what most of the common mathhammer tools are predicting. It's entirely possible to calculate the odds of particular strings of results, it's just not commonly presented because it's more complicated to interpret and isn't really needed.

Math is a tool. Saying a hammer "doesn't work" because you keep hitting your thumb with it is a fault with you, not with the hammer.

I've made a point of trying to discuss things in terms of probability more than in terms of averages over the last couple of years (ever since I started working on my suite of excel-based probability calculators). Much of it is, though, beyond what I can do in my head, so when I'm doing stuff on the fly it's usually still couched in terms of averages.

But you're definitely right. If you're of the opinion that math doesn't work or fails to account for bad luck, you're really just letting everyone know that you don't know how the math works.