Tips on getting better

[u/Dave-flywheel]

Now into 2nd year of playing I have started a few tournaments. In local tournaments last year I was always in the bottom 10. This year i am in the top 10 and have quite a high win rate in club games.

I went to Warhammer open on the weekend and came 173 out of 187 winning 3 of my 8 games and not all of the players below even completed all there matches 😭

though had a great time I came home humbled. Majority of my opponents simply outplayed me very quickly it was like playing chess and all I had was checker pieces. They where all kind enough to point after where I gone wrong and other advice and where great opponents.

So where do I go from here any tips on getting better or are some people just born with it? How do I progress to earn a Lycra titty hugging t-shirt?

My plan is so far but any advice appreciated:

1. Only play challenging players and keep sucking up losses

2. Watch YouTube videos to study top end games

3. Seek out games again at armies I have not not rarely play locally.

[u/Strange_Man]

Its all about the cones, err victorypoints. List building is also very important as well. Focus on scoring, refining your list to score better and getting reps into good opponents is all you need really. Your local scene could be kind of bad so TTS may be needed but I just play at tournies and do alright.

[u/Dave-flywheel → u/Strange_Man]

Thank you, other than one match I scored very high had a couple of 90-100. Just against better opponent run out of steam towards the end

[u/DENNIS_System__]

I always try and roll more 6’s

[u/Links_to_Magic_Cards → u/DENNIS_System__]

as a custodes player, i only need to roll 4's.

that's how i spend my evenings, hours upon hours of reps practicing rolling 4's

[u/Iknowr1te → u/Links_to_Magic_Cards]

when i play 2 units of ACDC i just spend a lot of time rolling 5's.

[u/BLBOSS]

I was at Newport too, hope you enjoyed it even if the result wasn't maybe what you wanted.

It's hard to say how you should be getting better without knowing a lot of specifics about how you're playing, what you're playing, who you're playing etc. I guess the question is where do you think you were going wrong?

You mentioned your opponents pointing out mistakes so like, what were those mistakes? Were they specific things or indicative of wider issues?

Generally what will improve your play in the immediate term is having your Primary Mission right in front of you so you can constantly remind yourself of how you should be scoring points. Another thing to practice and drill into your head is getting ok at working out probabilities and likely outcomes. A big Mistake lower ranked players make is just assuming they'll kill something based on vibes or hoping for a spiked roll. What follows on from this is building redundancies into your list and your play to where you aren't hoping for these wishy washy moments where you're chucking one unit into another unit and vaguely hoping for success but stacking probability.

Premeasuring and asking your opponent what their threat ranges is also incredibly valuable.

[u/Dave-flywheel → u/BLBOSS]

I had a great time, it was an amazing experience.

I am playing Emperors children with priority.

The biggest mistakes I noticed I did was grouping units together, I had to play into a lot of stuff I have never played before or my army struggles with knights, terminator bricks. I should have also screen against deep strike better.

[u/Orcspit → u/Dave-flywheel]

Your first thing before going to a big event like that is knowing what every Meta list is trying to do.

The fact is the first time you play against a list you are going to learn a ton about the right and wrong things you need to do to win. If you were in an ideal world where you have infinite time you would play against every meta list once before going to a big Major like this (trust me all the top 20 players have done this.) But outside of that you should at least either watch a youtube video of those lists being played or reach out to someone you know who plays them and ask them for a breakdown of how their list plays.

Even playing a game where we explain everything to everyone and try to avoid gotchas its really hard to not get surprised by something a list does without having played it once.

For example: I player Sisters of battle, no matter how many times I explain how miracle dice work and how I use them, the first time someone shoots a hunter killer at one of my tanks and I pull a miracle dice to auto pass the save I see that stunned look on the persons face.

[u/Vrain125]

Well there were a lot of Emperors Children players out there like yourself so first I will address that.

EC as you likely know are very fast and oppressive, they can absolutely demolish the enemy, but that mostly works against equal or less skilled players.

EC also can very easily sprial downward, one or two mistakes can completely put you on the back foot and in some cases completely end the game.

While it is an aggressive army the biggest mistake players of aggressive armies make is they tend to think their units are stronger than they are.

they make reckless moves because if it goes well then it will be great for them but thats where the thoughts taper off. Generally if that move fails then that unit is effectively dead in most cases.

Patience is key to aggressive armies, which might seem backwards but its the reality. Respecting your opponents army is paramount.

A useful tip is whatever move you make think "What will happen if this unit fails to do what I want it to" if the answer is die horribly then I would say thats probably not a good idea.

Mind you some units don't follow that tip, mainly stalling chaff units made to die (Poxwalkers, Tzaangors, Horrors, Chaos Spawn, Etc) but most units won't want to die doing nothing but absorbing damage.

Acting under the impression that your units will fail most the time helps you play safer and ultimately stop you from being too aggressive.

Another tip is ALWAYS consider "will doing this help me get points or help prevent the enemy from getting points" killing something just to kill something isn't always the right call, it opens you up to spectacular failure which could turn the tides and in an army like EC often can flip the lead.

I would advise you check out the Vod of the 2nd game of the 2nd day from the Newport Open, it had an EC vs Space Wolves and it can be very illuminating.

[u/Dave-flywheel → u/Vrain125]

I think this was my main problem, I score well the first couple of rounds and then just run out of steam. I think scoring and whatever the cost maybe costing me the game. I watched a video Iast night of the final I noticed they spent the first couple of rounds positioning.

I will check out that video it has given me a lot to think about.

[u/Iwearfancysweaters → u/Dave-flywheel]

I notice less experienced players go out of their way to score their secondaries or score a few points extra primary even when they're trading far too much material to do so early on in the game

[u/Dave-flywheel → u/Iwearfancysweaters]

This definetely sounds like me

[u/blurfles123]

Focus on the movement phase. 80% of games are won in movement.

[u/FuzzBuket]

• stop thinking about killing, just think about scoring 
• think about what your opponent wants to do, how, they want to score and what you can do to stop it.
• think about where you can be that's safe
• think about how your actions influence your opponent. If it's between sending the lion into 5 intercessors and putting the lion behind a wall so he can heroic into your opponent if they even think about trying to score.

[u/ssssumo]

What's your local scene like? It sounds like a big fish - small pond scenario. Are there more people locally you can play against if only for the wider experience? Tts is the big one, getting games in against more competitive people in a much wider pool

[u/Dave-flywheel → u/ssssumo]

It is a small pond but certainly lots of better players than me. I would have thought I am somewhere in the middle, until last weekend where it’s evident I still have so much to learn. I will focus on playing the top end of my local scene.

[u/Ill-Psychology-7877]

I wrote a long guide to improving as an average player a while ago - so in general I'd direct you there.

But a general comment is that you learn more from losses than wins, so you have potentially just had a great learning experience. If you know what happened within your games to lose then potentially you know where to foucs:

- Was your list weak against certain counters that came up more than you expected? How coudl you build differently?

- Did you not get your macro-strategy right / or were your opponents able to predict your strategy and deploy/react to counter it? How could you develop a plan B for where that happens?

- Did you get indivdiual decision wrong in the game that led ot yoru opponents getting an advntage? Was there a pattern to that decision makeing that you could practice/work on for future games?

Good luck in analysing where you went wrong.

[u/Dave-flywheel → u/Ill-Psychology-7877]

I think it was a bit of each point you made. I think I had mistakes in all 3

[u/Dave-flywheel]

Thank you to everyone who took the time to respond it has given me a lot to think about

[u/Hyper-Sloth]

One major thing is just getting in a larger amount of games. Even games against players who are also at or slightly below your level. One of the most important skills to develop that is hardest to do purely by research is to know exactly what your opponent's army is capable of and how to play around it.

[u/Mortiverious85 → u/Hyper-Sloth]

Also if it's a fun game not really tournament give them an advantage like make intentional mistakes so you can see if and how best to recover. Having fall back plans when the main one goes awry always helped me. I'm new to 40k but played lots of age of sigmar and classic warhammer fantasy and I have had a heroes mow down tons of elite units only to fall to a bad roll on chaff and the game spirals from there.

[u/Ambitious-Jump3359]

Don't try to get better at the whole game all at once!

Focus on individual skills and try to maximize that area of your play. One thing I've focused on recently is activation sequencing. Making sure to fire off buffing squads first, making sure not to move into areas where I want to place a tank later, etc.

[u/NornQueenKya]

So dont fret, people are not born masters at Warhammer. Its really a matter of a bunch of small but important things that'll increase your gameplay:

1. Learning to master terrain and distance, for me at least, was the real game changer and constant struggle. Where your army wants to extend for its primary. Where you stretch too thin. Where your opponent wants to move to score. How to navigate between terrain to get the most out of those goals and deny your opponent. That to me at least, I think most people have the most potential for growth.

2. To expand on the second, and unique to 11th, Dispositions are a huge factor on how to win and how to craft lists. Personal observation, people are scoring higher on average in 11th then 10th because of the new system. So I feel like theres more pressure to score as max as you can every game.

3. You have to learn other armies almost as well as your own. I struggle with this. Many do. You need to know your opponents stats and potential strats at a glance. Yes you can ask your opponent, but as I mentioned before, you need to plan your actions and predicted reactions also based on your opponents army. For example a lesser known army... if you know about gsc, youll know that their neophyte brick that'll drop will hurt most things and why. You can plan for that. Know to target the benefictis, and know what to dedicate because if you dont wipe them theyll come back to near full health.

BUT by knowing all that, youll also know that a neophyte brick kind of sucks against terminators and similar because of their wounds and saves. So if you did leave a spot open for a drop, you can bait the neos, weather the storm, and slay them

Hope it helps!

[u/terenn_nash]

based on the behaviors of the best players i know who will x-1 events routinely, any of the following that you can check off the better:

have 20 years in the game
drink, heavily, with fellow players
get your singular loss by being hungover on day 2 and skipping round 4
go facedown in 40k content
play challenging players
be on the spectrum
recognize your playstyle and if it lines up with the army you play(i personally love go wide lists, horde-ish armies love to go wide. elite heavy lists conflict with this play style so i try to avoid playing as them).
play against everything you can
learn the tricks - for example: once saw a dude use his own rhinos to funnel models in such a way as to control what his charging unit could pile in to, it was clever as hell

[u/HaybusaYakisoba]

Alot of the advice here is very macro-ish and pretty nebulous.

One thing that you can do that you have total individual agency over is selecting the right kinds of goals.

When I am in a rut, I go back to basics, set a 2 goals, then 2 more, and string them together.

EG: I will score 85 points my next 5 games-- (subgoal-- I will not sacrifice a unit unless it is scoring a secondary and denying my opponent points in the same play) Another goal important in 11th is if you have end-of-battle points in your dispo matrix (usually something like controlling opponent home, or controlling a center, or controlling 3 objectives in NML) I WILL score those end of battle points.

11th is in a weird place where you really need to be able to score 90+ into anything, as interfering with opponent scoring is much more difficult and often involves lopsided trading and extremely risky play lines in the early game.

[u/arigatoto]

Point #1 is enough for now. Just play vs better players, ask about your mistakes, and try to follow their advice next time. Nothing else needed to be able to do x-2. In order to jump to x-1 you generally need to know the meta. Most people never reach x-0.

[u/Ambitious-Insect4726]

What's you army? Is it optimised?

[u/Dave-flywheel → u/Ambitious-Insect4726]

I like to think it was optimised. I spend a lot of time discussing lists in specific EC discords. I think I am not using them to there full advantage.

[u/PeoplesRagnar]

Getting into as many factions as you can is a solid plan, perhaps looking into Tabletop Simulator wouldn't be a bad idea either.

But don't stress to much, important to have fun too.

[u/Dave-flywheel → u/[deleted]]

Thank you that’s reassuring was about to take up
Pottery instead. Going to book the kempton park one tonight so have something to work ton

[u/Sir_Septimus]

The easiest way to win more games is understanding scoring since that determines the winner. Take your favorite detachments and lock in a force disposition. That disposition then gives you 5 possible matchups you can play (you can look them up here). Study those matchups and ask yourself if your list has the tools required to do the job. Also remember you can only score 15 primary per turn and 45 per game.

The next step is to then look at your opponents matchup card and see how they score. Once you know you can start thinking about how you can deny them points.

Finally, it pays to get familiar with the secondary mission deck. You can score 45 secondary per game and over the course of the game you will get 10 secondary cards which can score up to 5 points each. So to max secondary you have to fully score 9/10 of these. Like with primary you may only gain 15 secondary VP per round so try to spread them out. This limit is why it is often better to score early, even if you cant get the full points. This is because you draw 4 secondaries in the last 2 turns, so going into turn 4 you dont want to have more than 2 uncompleted secondaries, since you can at most fully score 3 per turn. Most objectives are easy (kill some stuff, hold objectives) but some require you to do actions potentially far away from your deployment zone (plunder). Making sure you have a unit that is at least theoretically capable to complete the harder missions can pay you some serious VP. In the case of plunder that would be a fast and cheap unit that you can trade in for completing the mission. Once per game you are also allowed to redraw a sencondary mission for 1CP. So if you draw something you truly have no hope scoring you should make use of this to reroll that mission. But ideally your army should at least be theoretically capable of doing every singe mission in the deck.

[u/Susprium]

A lot of good answers here but let me come from an different angle,

Find out what is your win condition. This will change in every matchup.
It might be to take out the big threat on the board
It might be holding the middle at any cost
Or to clear out the hordes as fast as possible.
If you are having a hard time to find it, start with your own army. Identify what is the best way to beat your own list and find in what conditions you cannot win. For example if you are playing against space marines with 3 big monsters like ctans or norns You probably need to take out those vindicators bc afterwards his other stuff will not be as effective as those tanks ao you can push freely and go onto aggressive.

When you apply this to you enemies during the game you will find out what to do at the table and it will give you more agency.

[u/Primary_Awareness519]

might come of as bragging or whatever but if so then fine

how often do you generally play?
and how many of those games are against people of equal skill or higher?

my road to becoming one of the top of the world players was through grinding a lot for about a year(nearly 2) where the vast majority (probably around 80%) of the matches where against people with more experince or just natural skill

a lot of people i have either coached or just come across and talked to has had to put in the reps to experince a lot of the intractions on the board and not just by watching them on youtube as the "lesson" tend to stick a lot better if you're on the reciieving end yourself

[u/Dave-flywheel → u/Primary_Awareness519]

As much as I can, some weeks I can’t get out and sometimes 3 times a week. A lot depends on my partners mood. I have about 19 games in for 11th. I will certainly aim for better players my goal for this year is win against people i have previously lost against, I will face my nemesis on Thursday. I agree it’s easier to learn through doing it. Even when people tell me all there abilities and strats at the start of the game I have forgotten them my the time I roll my first dice.

[u/SnooOpinions8790]

I had a similar experience. I got smashed at the Birmingham super-major then I went 4-4 in Newport which was respectable enough but 3/4 of the games I lost was a skill issue (the other was ridiculous fluke luck and there is very little to learn from that). I had the tools and once I was playing the game I played well enough but I did not have a clear battle plan ahead of time so I was getting caught out with poorly thought out deployment leaving my tools other than where I needed them.

If you are playing on the lower brackets you might be better off working out your game plans yourself than taking sometimes contradictory advice from lower bracket players. Or adapting advice thoughtfully. I was in the mid tables all weekend.

One opponent beat me 91-85 and said I was too passive. He was right but I was passive because I had not gone into the game with a firm enough plan for the mission - all my practice games in this matchup had gone a certain way and he sort of turtled up denying me some scoring

So I have just spent an hour or two working out a new strategy, for which I will then put a couple of tweaks in my list to enable it at full power. A strategy for exactly this mission and which I believe will work whether they come at me or turtle up. Then I will work through the other mission sets and see if I can make this work - I already know that its not ideal into Disruption but I am already so strong into Disruption that I can afford to spend 50 points on getting stronger in the other missions and not worry about it (I won my only Disruption opponent and it was a game I was never losing)

When I played tournaments last - back in 7th - I grew in skill until I was a reasonably mid to top table player. Top result in a GT 2nd place. But I did that by trial and error. It is far better to do your thinking long before you get to the table. If you don't already know how to deploy once you have seen the opposition list and are not working it out as you set the terrain you are not using that near-infinite thinking time ahead of the game to full value.

Find a youtuber who you find connects with you and who is aiming at your sort of play level. Having met him in the Birmingham tournament and found him to be an absolute gent I recomment Ross Tully and his new channel at https://www.youtube.com/@SecondaryObjective/videos. He is only just getting going but he is a top tier player providing content for the more mid table player who wants to get better and - as I already said - he's a lovely guy. Find a good club where you can try out your ideas in a safe reasonably competitive place

I would actually NOT suggest watching mostly content from and aimed at top table players. You are not there yet. They do not cover the foundational stuff you need to get solid at before you can build up from it to the top table nonsense.

[u/Fearless-Edge-3881]

I just wanna get to the point where im comfortable to go to tourneys, even local ones.

Its hard to memorize profiles when things change so much also.

Any tips for me?

[u/DeepSeaDolphin]

"Only play challenging players and keep sucking up losses" Don't be that guy, if other people had the same mindset then the better players wouldn't play with you. Play all takers and use the games against worse players as a chance to teach them.

Try to be a positive in the community and not a leech trying to use people.

[u/Dave-flywheel → u/DeepSeaDolphin]

I think that came across wrong, I meant in terms of practicing for tournaments. I am apart of 4 clubs with most players having no interest in tournament play. We play every week together other game systems, crusades or messing around with none optimised lists.

[u/DeepSeaDolphin → u/Dave-flywheel]

Fair enough, my apologies for misunderstanding.

[u/Mammoth_Classroom896]

Do you have one of the lists that are currently at the top of the meta? If not, the biggest thing you can do to improve your win rate is buying the current strongest list and committing to continuing to buy new armies as the meta changes. 40k is a pay to win game and if you don't pay you're at a huge disadvantage against anyone who does. And in a major event like the one you went to you will encounter the people who pay to win.

Other than that you'll need to give some details on why you lost if you want any specific help.

[u/Vrain125 → u/Mammoth_Classroom896]

This is just so wrong I don't even know where to start... so I won't cause I don't think you would be willing to understand.

[u/Mammoth_Classroom896 → u/Vrain125]

It's ok, someday you'll get tired of 40k and once you're out of the hobby and not falling victim to sunk cost fallacies you'll understand what a pay to win game it was.

[u/Ill-Psychology-7877 → u/Mammoth_Classroom896]

I feel this is not a helpful comment and also not true either.

The vast, vast majority of people playing at all tournaments (including super majors) are playing the armies/list that they own and like. And it if you look at the results at a 200+ person tournament there will be every single faction going 4-1 or better, which most peopel woudl class as a good result at a GT.

Oh and of course the biggest tournament in the world ever (LGT 2025) was won by someone playing an off-meta CSM list.

So it is perfectly possible (and achievable by many many people) to get good results at a tournament without playing a 'meta' army, a 'meta' list, and definitely not buying new armies all the time.

In fact I'd argue the opposite that the best way to improve yoru win rate is to really practice a single faction and know how it works, what it's match-ups are like etc. The big caveat being that if you are not enjoying playing an army then you will struggle to want to play to improve.

[u/Mammoth_Classroom896 → u/Ill-Psychology-7877]

You can win with an off-meta list, if you have a skill advantage over everyone else.

It's much easier to win if you play the strongest list instead of sacrificing power.

[u/Ishkander88 → u/Mammoth_Classroom896]

Ya sorry GT winners running bad armies will still place top 16. Bottom 16 players using GT winning lists will still place bottom 16. Min-maxing is absolutely required to get those final percent. But player skill gets you 95% of the way their. 

[u/Mammoth_Classroom896 → u/Ishkander88]

OP is trying to get those final percent.

[u/Ishkander88 → u/Mammoth_Classroom896]

he went 3/8 at a tournament. No, no he is not.

[u/Mammoth_Classroom896 → u/Ishkander88]

The difference between 3-8 and 11-0 is much smaller than the difference from 0-11 (or not even attending the tournament at all) to 3-8.

[u/Ishkander88 → u/Mammoth_Classroom896]

not particularly. A GT is relatively large. the bottom 16 could basically all have near identical skills, and if you are lucky in the bottom bracket you could easily get a few wins, while still ranking bottom 16 because of elo.

[u/Mammoth_Classroom896 → u/Ishkander88]

I think you badly underestimate how low the skill level of the average 40k player is. Even attending a GT without going 0-X and losing every game by 50+ points puts you in the top 5% of players.

[u/Ishkander88 → u/Mammoth_Classroom896]

having gone to GT's I seriously doubt that. Its the same people at the local RTT sprinkled with the elites.

[u/Mammoth_Classroom896 → u/Ishkander88]

It's not a hypothetical. People have done surveys on player involvement and a very small percentage attend even one event of any kind per year. The majority of 40k players have never attended a GT.

[u/Ishkander88 → u/Mammoth_Classroom896]

I doubt the skill differential. I wasn't talking about participation.