Wargaming Heuristics
Warhammer, and wargaming in general, changes all the time so I figured I would write an article on wargaming heuristics. Hopefully that can help you and maybe serve as a basis for future handbooks and tacticas down the line.
So why listen to me? Well, you shouldn’t really - the most important thing to do to get better is play a lot. But I cannot help you with that, so I might as well pass on what I’ve learned through many years of competitive play. What follows is an introduction to some, hopefully beneficial, concepts and terms that apply to wargaming. But remember the golden rule: Wargaming is supposed to be fun. This article is not me trying to say that competitive play is the only, or even the right, way of playing.
So what is a heuristic?
It’s a rule of thumb.
You always have a thumb with you, which is why many traditional measuring systems are based on the length of your thumb. Right, so what I’m getting at is that a heuristic is a practical way of reaching a quick approximation that can help your decision making. However, it is only that - it is not a truth and it is not exact. It is just a starting point.
You don’t understand dice!
This is not an insult - it is a reminder.
It is important to remember that we don’t understand dice, because our brain plays tricks on us. These tricks are called biases. They are patterns of misconception - and if you want to improve your game, you have to acknowledge the areas in which our brain distorts our perception of the game.
Results-Oriented Thinking
Forget about the actual outcome.
In brief, results-oriented thinking is when you forgo logic and instead use the individual outcome of a decision to determine whether your thought process was “right” or “wrong.” Winning doesn't always mean your strategy was right. And losing doesn't always mean your strategy was wrong. An example of this would be if you risk a long charge that will hurt your position if you do not make it, but then if you actually get that high roll on the charge you consider the charge to be a good tactical decision.
Gambler’s Fallacy
Dice have no memory.
This bias is the incorrect belief that if a particular event occurs more frequently than normal during the past it is less likely to happen in the future. Put simply: If I have a bunch of bad rolls in a row I have a tendency to believe that the next couple of rolls will be better - because my brain wants to “even out” the bad rolls. They won't. The thing is - the average roll is not to be expected in the short term. By short term I don’t mean one battle round, I don’t even mean one whole battle. You might be in “bad luck” for several tournaments. But what to do about it? You can’t, so don’t. Don’t start changing your army composition or make reckless moves because you rolled poorly. If you have done your homework and been rational when building your army - keep it as it is. Don’t let one loss change your perception of your tactics or army, rather look at it like: “Ok, so I rolled poorly, but with that in mind how did my units and decisions fare in spite of me being unlucky?”. Which leads me to my next point.
Warhammer is high variance
Shit happens.
High variance means that chance has a big impact on the game. Chess is a game where chance has no impact on the game, whereas Warhammer is on the opposite side of that spectrum. Fluffing a charge roll for instance has immediate consequences for the game. So what to do about it? First off: Fuck it. Shrug it off. Do not let it impact you emotionally as this will erode your decision making. Secondly: Think of Warhammer as risk management. This is not to say that you should not take risks, but don’t do something because you HOPE it will turn out great. Think about what the possible positive and negative outcomes of a given action are, and if the pros outweigh the cons, do it.
Risk = Probability x Consequence.
Does this mean that you shouldn’t do something that has a high risk? No. You definitely should - if that is your best road to victory. Which brings me to my next point.
Win the game, not the combat
Eyes on the prize!
It might seem simple, but in the heat of battle it is very common to forget what the actual goal of the game is. Chances are that the goal is not annihilating your enemy but rather holding objectives or similar tasks. Especially when we think about what units we like, most of us have a tendency to look at damage output - but this is only good for determining how well a unit performs in combat, and that does not necessarily mean how well the unit performs regarding winning the game. But hey, the good news is that your opponent is as likely to forget the victory conditions - so use that against them. In line with this thinking, try to ask yourself: “What does my army do well? How does it win? And what should I avoid?”. If you get stuck in a combat that is on the “I should avoid this”-list, then retreat - don’t waste your resources.
Read the frigging rules!
Especially if you think you know them.
Our brain makes shortcuts all the time - which is a good thing and a bad thing. Good because we preserve mental resources, bad because we miss many things in the process. We think that we have read the warscroll or the victory conditions - but we probably missed something. So read the rules. Then read them again. Then read them aloud. Then get your mother to read them to you.
Meta is king
Nothing exists in a vacuum.
You probably heard the term ‘meta’ somewhere on the forum, but what does it actually mean? When people say meta in the context of wargaming they mean: Environment. So discussing your meta means talking about what gaming environment you have in regards to army builds and playstyles. When you think about what units to bring to the table, never forget the actual environment you play in. The thing is, your units are always relative to what they will face on the field - so read up on what you might face. Is there a high risk of your opponents fielding lots of artillery? Don’t bring your monsters. Is the tournament focused on capturing objectives? Bring big units with staying power to hug the objectives.
Win more
Too much of a good thing is bad.
We want to win - but we want to do that by using the least possible amount of resources. Win more is a term describing when something uses excessive force and in the process spends too many resources. This will often come up in units that have really huge damage output but is also very pricey. Think of Blood Knights - they are pretty killy, right? But they are pricey as well. So bringing 10 of them might be overkill - 5 might be perfectly fine for the job, leaving room in the budget for other units to take care of other tasks. By bringing something you always leave something at home - and that is an important calculation to make when designing your army.
Lose less
You might lose less, but you’re still losing.
More often than we would like we are on the back foot - our forces pressed up against the wall. So what do we do? We try to mitigate our losses. However, this might lead you to “lose less” instead of winning. Losing less is still losing. So when you are at a disadvantage look for the opportunities to regain the initiative rather than trying to conserve what little you have left. Warhammer is a game of high variance and if you’re losing then a last hoorah might be the only thing that will get you back into the fight. Concrete examples of this would be a daring charge, putting your general at risk or going for a spell that is hard to cast but has a big effect on the game.
That’s it for now folks! I might come back once in a while and update this article. I hope you enjoyed it and please do comment and come with suggestions if you feel like something is missing.
Cheers,
Sunny
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. But I guess that they don't define it as this, and more refer to it like "I get the job done".